


Pariahs

by TheThirdAmell



Series: Accursed Ones [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Comics), Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Comic: Dragon Age: Those Who Speak, Dark, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Healing, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Multi, Polyamory, Recovery, Romance, Sexual Content, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:21:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21556930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirdAmell/pseuds/TheThirdAmell
Summary: Amatus. Ma Vhenan. Forgotten words from dead languages. Words they never thought to speak or have spoken to them. There was no place for them. They were pariahs - martyrs who picked the wrong causes, for the wrong reasons, for the wrong people.But they spoke them, all the same.
Relationships: Fenris/Isabela, Fenris/Isabela/Merrill (Dragon Age), Fenris/Merrill, Isabela/Merrill (Dragon Age)
Series: Accursed Ones [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/264574
Comments: 103
Kudos: 103





	1. What's in a Name?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArcaneFeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcaneFeathers/gifts).



> This is a short Fenris/Isabela/Merrill romance. This takes place in the [Accursed Ones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/7904088) universe but reading it is not required to understand this story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fenris falls down.

9:32 Dragon Parvulis, Probably, Not Nearly Late Enough  
The Wounded Coast

Fenris had never thought he could have anything with Isabela until Hawke took them to the Wounded Coast together. The witch’s clan had chased ghasts down from the Sundermount to the Wounded Coast, where they settled with alarming fervor. Their presence was of no particular concern of the Kirkwall Guard. The area was rarely traveled by anyone of import, which meant it was traveled by those of unimport. 

And who did those of unimport turn to if not Hawke?

And so Hawke went, and for lack of aught else to do, Fenris went with him. He breathed in the salt of sea-foam, and took another drink of spiced wine from his canteen. For the elements - however they found him. And they always found him. The chill autumn air swept up in his hair and snuck into the crevices in his armor, as invasive and inevitable as the ghasts.

“These creatures breed like rodents,” Fenris said, not for the first time on this mission. “We will never see the coast clear of them all.”

“Not with that attitude,” Isabela touched him. She was always touching him. Nudging, prodding, pushing, shoving. Fenris had given up dissuading her. He’d realized some time ago it wasn’t born so much from a lack of respect for his person as an appreciation of it, and… well…

It was nice to be appreciated. 

He’d also realized some time ago that she was an appreciative person. It seemed there were few people Isabela didn’t appreciate. She seemed to proposition everyone and everything, Fenris included. It was part of her - as much as lyrium was of him. Even out on the coast, stalking through the sand, Isabela didn’t walk so much as saunter. It was a little exhausting. 

She was attractive. It was a fact. Fenris didn’t know who she thought needed reminding. Isabela was like a storm, and nothing could contain her, not even her armor. The dark leather strained at the fullness of her hips and chest, tightly corseted and put together in pieces, as if each part of her needed its own restraint, and some of them were failing. Wild hair escaped from beneath her bandana, whipping in the wind as if it missed the life beholden to it.

“Not for nothing,” Hawke assured him, “Friends are paying.”

“Friends of who again?” Fenris asked. 

“Friends of money,” Isabela said eagerly, her motive shining in her golden eyes. 

Fenris exhaled his laugh through his nose, and Isabela threw an arm around his shoulder. She grazed the brands on the back of his neck in the process, and the lyrium rippled beneath his skin. A familiar agony, if not a gentle one. He fought down a flinch. Isabela didn’t know better. She couldn’t. He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t told anyone.

“We have to try,” Merrill said, driftwood staff leaving holes the sand swallowed as she walked, “My clan couldn’t have meant for this to happen.”

“Couldn’t they have?” Fenris didn’t really ask, because he didn’t really care about her answer. “The Dalish call themselves the People, as if the word were meant for them alone. Why would they care for those they view as less?”

“I care…” Merrill mumbled.

“But you don’t deny they’re less than,” Fenris noted.

“Play nice,” Isabela released him only to elbow him. She missed his brands, the second time around, “We’re all getting paid. Can’t we focus on that? What more does a man need than a reason to fill his purse? And a reason to empty it.” 

“A colorful metaphor, as always,” Fenris shook his head.

“I hope to build a rainbow,” Isabela mused. 

“Up ahead,” Hawke called them to a halt. He knelt in the sand and took his pack off his back to string up his bow. “Looks like that’s the cave. Locals do most of the fishing here. Should be good, long as we can harry them to another part of the coast.” 

“And when they return?” Fenris asked.

“So do we,” Hawke said simply.

He was incorrigible. But pay was pay. Fenris stretched, testing his footing in the sand. It would be an ill battle for him and for Isabela if they fought it here. Hawke and Merrill didn’t need the mobility, but one wrong move could end him. He wouldn’t give the Maker the satisfaction of his death before Danarius gave him the satisfaction of his. Fenris eyed the area for a better position.

He found it on the farside of the cave, where rock and grass overtook sand and bled into a cypress grove. “We should find better footing,” Fenris said, “I’ll check the grove for another entrance.”

“Don’t go alone,” Hawke called. 

The sea followed him, the scent of brine on the autumn breeze, and he belatedly realized it for Isabela. “I’ll protect you,” She said cheerily, falling in at his side as he made for the grove. 

“I need no protection,” Fenris said.

“Are you sure?” Isabela asked, “I know my way around a ghasthole.”

“That’s-...I’m sorry?” 

“Ghastholes,” Isabela repeated, “Holes, with ghast in them. You have to be careful with ghastholes. You really have to feel out the entrance, and go in slowly. You never know when they’re going to go off-”

“Stop,” Fenris choked on his laugh, snorting and smacking at his chest, “Please. Your expertise is noted.”

“About time you laughed,” Isabela grinned, “You seemed especially broody today. Don’t get me wrong, I like it.”

“From what I gather, you like a lot of things,” Fenris said.

“Nonsense,” Isabela straightened with what he imagined was mock indignation, “But when I see something I like, I go after it.”

She reached out to touch his chin, and Fenris caught her hand before she could come into contact with his markings. She didn’t deserve his flinch. “I suggest keeping your distance.”

“Now you’re just making it challenging,” Isabela huffed. “What do you have against this mission, anyway?”

“There are worse enemies on our shores than ghasts,” Fenris explained, “We would do better to turn our attention to the qunari. The Arishok will not tolerate Kirkwall forever.”

“Or we could not poke the hornet’s nest,” Isabela suggested, as she always did when the qunari were involved. It was a reasonable fear of reasonable people. Fenris didn’t think much of it. “With how well you know the Qun, I’m surprised you haven’t converted.”

“You know the letter of the law, and yet you choose to ignore it,” Fenris countered.

“Good point,” Isabela said, “But still, a lot of elves are converting to the Qun recently. Kitten says-”

“Venhedis,” Fenris didn’t care what the witch had to say. “I did not escape one form of slavery only to become a slave to myself. Look there, another entrance. This will do better. We should get Hawke.”

“Fenris-!” Isabela caught his arm when he turned to leave. He hadn’t expected it. The lyrium flared, burning up his arm, and he flinched despite himself. Isabela let go abruptly. 

It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t for her. He was what he was, and Isabela seemed to favor him not in spite of but because of it. He wanted to explain himself, but no matter how many times he inhaled the autumn air it never turned to words. He took a drink from his canteen instead. The spice wine did little to warm him. “Yes?”

“... Don’t be a ghasthole.” Isabela said.

“I shall endeavour to exist with less offense,” Fenris said. He thought of smiling, in lieu of the apology she deserved, but he wasn’t sure his face could even make the expression. “For you.”

They retrieved Hawke and Merrill without incident and set up their battle plan in the grove. Merrill would lure the ghasts out with a fireball, Hawke would thin their ranks, Fenris would take point, and Isabela would finish off any who escaped. 

It was a good plan. Well executed, but it was, as Isabela would say, poking a hornet’s nest. The ghasts were small, vicious creatures. One was a nuisance. A pack was a threat. They swarmed out of the cave at Merrill’s fireball, some charred, others still aflame, all grunting and squealing their rage. They were all sinew, and Fenris couldn’t tell if the quills on their backs and arms were natural or self-inflicted armaments. Their mouths didn’t seem to fully close, teeth bursting from swollen red gums, and they spit fury as they swarmed.

A sweep from his broadsword could cleave two, three if tightly packed, but they were a multitude. More than a few made it past him, and he pulled on the lyrium beneath his skin, unleashing a pulse of spirit energy in a chaotic explosion of elemental force. The ghasts toppled, and it gave time for Isabela to dance nimbly among them, skewering one staggered foe after the next through the throat with her rapier.

Another wave came, and was felled with arrows before they reached him. The third swallowed by roots brought to life by nature magic. The fourth emerged with a velghast. 

Too late, they realized the club in its hand for a staff. Fenris pulled on the lyrium beneath his skin to deflect the hostile magic, but it wasn’t meant for him. The ground beneath Merrill shuddered, and cracked, splittering like cobwebs. Fenris ran for her without thinking, and knocked her out of the spell’s radius in time for the ground to open up and swallow him.

“Fasta vass!” Fenris screamed what he felt were adequate famous last words and careened into darkness.

Fenris groaned. A light waved in his face, and refused to move when he batted his hand in its general direction. It took him longer than he would have liked to realize he couldn’t bat the light away, and when he did, he swore and struggled to sit up. 

“Good morning,” Isabela’s voice echoed bemusedly in his ears. The pirate slowly came into focus, sitting beside him with a torch in her hand. 

“Not morning,” Fenris guessed, pushing away her helping hands. His head was killing him, “How much did I drink?”

“Not enough, or we’d be having a lot more fun together,” Isabela said, planting the torch in the dirt beside them. 

Fenris sat up, and glanced around. He couldn’t see much, beyond Isabela’s torch, but it looked like a cave. “Where are we? Where’s the exit?”

Isabela pointed up. Fenris followed her finger, but there was nothing above them but more dirt and roots. “Up there. It sealed itself up, somehow, while you were sleeping.” 

“Lovely,” Fenris said flatly. He moved to stand, and white hot pain seared up him and burst into a thousand tiny stars in his skull. He collapsed to the ground, cursing and clutching his legs. He must have broken his ankles or legs or something in the fall. 

And for once, no Anders.

“Easy, sweet thing,” Isabela scooted closer, her hand hovering ineffectually over his ankle, “You really took a tumble on your way down here.“

“And you?” Fenris asked, resisting the urge to rub at the injury.

“Sadly, you keep rejecting them from me,” Isabela teased.

“I mean how are you here?”

“Butter feet?” Isabela shrugged, “I slipped. It happens. Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m going to try to find a way out, now that you’re awake.”

Isabela retrieved her torch, and stepped over the body of a ghast Fenris assumed she had taken it from. She was still sauntering, even now, as she explored the length of the cavern. It must have been home to ghasts, at one point. The corpse was a clue, but so were the multitude of nests made from bones the ghasts had picked clean.

“What is that smell?” Fenris muttered, assaulted by the scent of sulfur and rotten meat.

“You’re in a ghasthole, what do you think it is?” Isabela called back.

Fenris uncorked his canteen, but the scent of spiced wine didn’t mask the others so much as mingle with them. He gagged, and corked it back up. “Anything?” Fenris called.

“Lots of things,” Isabela said, coming back to stand over him. She looked him up and down like she was measuring him, which she could not possibly have a good reason to do, “Lots of ghast-sized things.”

“No,” Fenris said.

“Well I don’t see you offering any suggestions,” Isabela huffed. 

“You intend for us to crawl through a ghasthole in the hopes that it leads to an exit?” Fenris deduced.

“All ghastholes are exits,” Isabela joked. 

“How long are you going to joke about ghastholes?” Fenris asked.

Isabela seemed to consider it, and ultimately shrugged, “Until it stops being funny. Come on, I think I saw one that was big enough for both of us on the east side,”

She planted her torch back in the dirt and looped her hands under his armpits, connecting with the brands on his arms. Pain seized through him, and Fenris snapped forward to escape her touch. “Kevesh - Don’t touch me.”

“Look, sweet thing, you’re free to hate me when you’re free, but right now-”

“You inspire no hate,” Fenris cut her off. He was averse to touch, not the one who did the touching. “-... It has nothing to do with you, or what I want. I do not allow anyone close for a reason. When my markings were created, the pain was extraordinary, and the memory lingers.”

“The memory?” Isabela sat back down and scooted close to him, though not close enough to touch. “What do you mean? Does it hurt everywhere, or just on your markings?”

“Just the markings,” Fenris explained. “Danarius’ ritual stole everything from me. My memories, my ability to be touched, even my name. Fenris… was the name Danarius bestowed upon me. His ‘Little Wolf.’ Whatever I had before, whoever I was, it’s lost.”

Fenris flexed his palms. The lyrium glowed, even through the gauntlets, eating up the back of his hands where any might hold them. It sleeved his arms, his legs… carved up his chest, his neck, and even his lips. It granted no reprieve. It never would. Danarius would never allow him that. 

Isabela reached for him, and Fenris had to fight an instinctive urge to slap her hand away. She was no magister - out to torment him. She was a good person who had freed others like him when they hadn’t the good sense to free themselves. He held still, and Isabela traced his cheek. 

“So this doesn’t hurt?” Isabela asked.

“No.”

“And this?” Isabela traced his throat, skipping over brands with a touch so deft it made him tremble. One wrong move, one twitch-

“No.”

“And this?” Isabela leaned towards him. She brought the sea with her, the scent of salt and surely the taste of it, there on her lips when she wet them. They parted invitingly, and then fell just short of his own, brushing his cheek instead. 

“... In its own way,” Fenris said softly, reminding himself to breathe.

“I can work with that,” Isabela grinned and stood. “Where are the marks, under your arms?”

Fenris gestured vaguely at his arms, and held them out so she could move him. Isabela caught under his shoulders again, more carefully the second time around, and spent a minute dragging him towards the exit before she gave up, wheezing. “Let’s just-... Let’s sit down for a bit.”

Fenris stared at the yard of upturned dirt they’d left, and snorted. “I agree. We’ve made a great deal of progress.”

“Maybe Hawke will just come find us,” Isabela groaned, falling dramatically onto the ground beside him and throwing her hand over her eyes. 

“That’s a possibility,” Fenris allotted, staring at her hair and the way it haloed her when she was on her back. 

“That means no.”

“It means no.” Fenris set his hands on the ground, and scooted himself backwards. He moved an inch for his effort. He’d be here a while. “You can walk. I cannot. The solution here is simple.”

“The solution weighs about twelve stones and moves a yard an hour,” Isabela flapped a hand at him, “Just give me a minute.”

“Isabela-”

“That’s not my name,” Isabela cut him off.

“What?”

“It is, but it’s not,” Isabela told the hand over her eyes. Maybe it was easier to talk to. He couldn’t blame her, “Like Fenris. My husband gave it to me. It means ‘Little Beauty’. Little Beauty, Little Wolf…”

“... I have trouble picturing you a married woman,” Fenris admitted.

“It wasn’t a real marriage,” Isabela scoffed, “I was his plaything. A prized possession. He saw me with my mother in the market, and decided he had to have me… He’s dead now, though, so that’s nice.”

“... And you kept this name?” Fenris asked. “Why? I know no other, but as you said, he is dead.”

“Too many questions,” Isabela decided, climbing back up to her feet to drag him another yard before giving up again. 

“Why tell me at all?” Fenris asked, but he imagined he knew. Some bit of commonality. Some bit of comfort. 

“Just… so you know,” Isabela took another break beside him. 

Fenris glanced to the exit, still some several yards off. He didn’t warrant all this effort. She could leave and come back with Hawke. Or not come back at all. She wasn't beholden to him, nor he to her. He had made a foolish decision to save the witch, but Isabela was here by accident. He’d seen her walk away from better men.

… He’d never seen her trip in the process.

“Tell me again how you ended up down here with me?” Fenris asked. 

“I told you, I fell,” Isabela said. “It’s not important. Let’s just get you out of here.”

“And then?” Fenris asked. 

“And then… we’ll be out of here?” Isabela said. 

“And then?” Fenris pressed, “Why tell me about your husband?”

“Why tell me about Danarius?” Isabela shot back.

“Because-...” Fenris hesitated, but he was in a ghasthole, and Isabela had told him not to be one. “If you want me, I would have you know me. You said you can work with my markings, but I am an escaped slave, and an elf, and I am living in a borrowed mansion. Do none of these things bother you?”

“Those things are what I like about you, sweet thing,” Isabela traced his lips again, and he felt… seen. Seen in a way slaves never were. Fenris reached for her, and was almost surprised when she came at his beckon. 

She was everything he imagined. Everything he denied himself. She pressed her lips to his own, soft and supple and safe, conscious of the lyrium that cut off at his bottom lip. She was like the ocean; it was in the salt on her skin, the cool caress of her fingers, the warmth of her eyes like the sun on the horizon. 

She broke from him like a wave crashing on the rocks, and the tender exchange was over, and she was just Isabela again. But Isabela was enough.

“Look, sweet thing, I’m not here bringing feelings into this, but… Your old master - he only takes what you let him. I say, if you can, you take it back. Start with your name. Why don’t you let me help with the sex?”

Fenris chuckled, “When we get out of here, perhaps.”

“Oh, there is no ‘perhaps,’” Isabela said eagerly, cracking her knuckles and bending to drag him again, “Let’s go, we are so having sex.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is linked from [Chapter 86](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/48911036) of Accursed Ones.


	2. Lovely Little Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some things are fixed and some things are broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place between Chapters [86](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/48911036#workskin) and [87](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/49128629#workskin) of Accursed Ones and is referenced in [Chapter 93](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/50354819#workskin), though reading it is not required to understand this story.

9:32 Dragon Umbralis, One of Many Days, Not Too Early, Not Too Late  
Hightown: Tevinter Foreign Quarter

Fenris had a lovely little mansion, if mansions could be little things. It was cramped into a dark corner of Hightown, almost like it was shy. A small garden broke up the whitewashed marble out front, where Fenris could grow embrium or canavaris or other things. Not that he did. 

The narrow plot of land was overgrown with vines, crawling up rotten trellises to cover the tightly shuttered windows. Grapes grew thick to bursting, never harvested, and coated the ground around the estate. It smelled almost like wine, inside and out.

Merrill felt a cramp coming on in her shoulder, and adjusted the bundle on her back. Brooms, mops, and dusters, with her staff mixed in somewhere. She hoped. If it had fallen out on the walk up from the alienage, there was no way she would find it again, and a broom wouldn't make a very good focus for her magic. 

Unless it was cleaning magic. Was there such a thing? Maybe with a careful application of telekinetic energies... 

Isabela nudged her out of her thoughts. The pretty pirate shifted the basket she was carrying under one arm, filled to the brim with lye soap and rags. She shot Merrill a grin and rattled the knocker on Fenris' door. It was an iron wolf holding a chain in its mouth, a twisted snarl on its face. Fenris opened the door with the same expression. 

He took one look at their supplies and closed it again. 

"Should we go home…?" Merrill asked, trying not to sound hopeful. 

"Fenris!" Isabela hollered, knocking violently, "Fenris, open the door!" 

"No!" Fenris yelled back. 

"I'll just pick the lock!" Isabela threatened.

"Fasta vass!" Fenris cursed. Merrill was pretty sure it was a curse. It sounded like a curse, "Pick it, then!" 

"Did you bring a lockpick?" Merrill asked.

"Anything is a lockpick if you're clever enough, Kitten," Isabela winked, setting down the basket to survey the mansion's entrance. Her eyes settled on a window first and a rock second. 

"Er…" Merrill said.

Isabela flung the rock through the window. Picking the basket back up, she kicked out the remaining glass and broken boards with her boot and hopped through, "Lock. Picked." 

"Have you gone mad?" Fenris demanded, standing in the wreckage of his window. 

"We're here to help you clean," Isabela announced, thrusting the basket into Fenris' arms. 

"Starting with your window I suppose," Merrill said, maneuvering cautiously through the shards on bare feet. "Do you want me to try to reforge the glass?" 

"I want you to leave," Fenris hissed. He dropped the basket, and a bit of soap tumbled out. If they got no further, at least it touched the floor. Merrill supposed that counted. "There is the door. There is the window. Pick one and go." 

"Not until we clean this place up," Isabela waved a gloved hand at Fenris' dilapidated foyer. “Window last. Corpses first.”

Then again, ‘dilapidated’ seemed like a generous description. Cobwebs canvassed the ceiling, dirt carpeted the floor, and all manner of stains papered the walls. A bundle of bones was decaying in the corner, and had leaked a rainbow onto the floor. It was hard to imagine someone having so many colors inside them. Fenris certainly didn't. 

"They serve a warning." Fenris stood defensively in front of his former houseguest, "One normally heeded."

"I don't think they work, or you wouldn't live here," Merrill stepped around him to kneel in front of the bundle. It was so old it had stopped stinking, and just smelled musty. Like an old book no one wanted to read. It was kind of sad. "I feel sorry for both of you."

"Did you have to bring her?" Fenris demanded.

"No," Isabela said without apology. "Look, sweet thing, I know I always say loot the bodies, but I just mean take the loot. We'll start with making a pyre out back-" 

"The only thing you are making is your way out the door," Fenris interrupted.

"Remember that sex we were planning on having?" Isabela asked. "Ever again?"

"I do not tell you how to live your life," Fenris snarled, "You do not tell me how to live mine."

"There's not really a lot of life in here," Merrill said, poking the corpse. It crumpled in on itself with a puff of dust, and Merrill coughed. "Don't you want your home to be… well, homey?"

"This is not my home," Fenris said.

"It kind of is," Merrill said, taking the bundle off her back. She rolled out the brooms, mops, dusters, and stared, a little overwhelmed at where to start. "Home is wherever you are and whatever you make it. Don't you want to make something you like?"

"No," Fenris said. 

"Stop being such a ghasthole,” Isabela said, “You're the one who turned down a room at the Hanged Man. Why you want to squat up here in Hightown is beyond me.” 

“I like the view,” Fenris said. 

“So do I,” Isabela returned.

“But all the shutters are closed…” Merrill said, glancing up from the bundle. Isabela had a finger twisted up in Fenris’ tunic, her eyes fixed on his lips despite the sneer that graced them. Isabela mirrored the expression, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and worrying it. Her eyebrows raised slightly while Fenris’ furrowed, and Merrill couldn’t help but flush.

It was so… intimate. It was worse than watching them kiss, knowing they could call on the memory of one so easily. Merrill forced her gaze back to the bundle, picking at a knot in the wood on one of the brooms. 

“You waste your time,” Fenris said, “This is no home of mine.” 

“Right,” Isabela drawled, “It's all just a waiting game for Danarius. Rat trap or no, the least you could do is change out the cheese.”

“What cheese?” Merrill asked. Please let there not be cheese. Dead bodies and unrequited longing, she could handle. Moldy food, she could not. 

“Would you be surprised to learn that it isn’t, in fact, his mansion?” Fenris asked, ignoring her question. “It belongs to a Tevinter merchant, one who has evidently given up on the place. Perhaps he is dead. Perhaps Danaris killed him. Perhaps he realized this place is not worth the time of day it will take you to clean it.”

“Perhaps you are,” Isabela poked Fenris’ nose. He swatted at where her hand had been, like he was chasing a fly, and not a pirate queen. Isabela didn’t seem to notice or care. She made a show of rolling up imaginary sleeves, and grinned at Merrill, “Come on, Kitten. Let’s get started.”

Merrill chased Isabela with a broom as the pirate gathered up bones, skulls, and dried intestines. Fenris for his part did nothing. He vanished into the cellars, and left the two of them alone to cart corpses out into the courtyard. It was a horrible task for a horrible person, but Merrill had a less than horrible time.

It wasn't possible to have a horrible time with Isabela. Even when horrible things happened, Isabela had a way of making them not so horrible. Cleaning the mansion of a man who scorned both the Dalish and alienage elves alike was definitely not something Merrill would have done of her own accord, but she wanted to be there for Isabela and at times that meant being there for Fenris. Recently, it was a lot of the time. 

“So…” Merrill started cautiously, “You’ve had many lovers, haven’t you?”

“Fewer than some think,” Isabela shrugged, glancing over her shoulder for the question. 

Merrill tried very hard to keep her face neutral, “But you never stay with them.”

“No,” Isabela said. “Why should I?”

“It’s just, the act of lovemaking is so… intimate.” 

“I don’t ‘make love.’” Isabela wrinkled her nose at the term, “What I do is only skin-deep, Kitten. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

“What about Fenris?” Merrill asked.

“What about Fenris?” Isabela repeated.

“I think he likes you,” Merrill explained. 

“You think so, do you?” Isabela heaved a pile of bones out into the courtyard, and dusted off her hands. 

Merrill fidgeted with her broom, “He looks at you all the time, when we’re out on jobs with Hawke. Then he looks embarrassed and pretends he’s busy with something else. I know he was rather cross today, but you wanted to do this for him, and I just thought… there was something more.”

“Hmm,” Isabela cracked her knuckles, and looked like she was considering the idea for the first time. Regret welled up in Merrill, and she felt terrible for it. Terrible for bringing it up, terrible for the thoughtful expression on Isabela’s face, terrible for wishing it wasn’t there. “I’ll have to think about that. Why this sudden interest in my love life, Kitten?”

“No reason,” Merrill squeaked. 

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Isabela asked.

“No!” Merrill dropped the broom and caught it again in the same heartbeat, a feat in itself when it raced faster by the minute, “No, of course not.”

“Because you don’t have to be,” Isabela tucked a bit of Merrill’s hair back behind her ear, her fingers brushing the pointed tip, and for a moment Merrill thought she might faint. “We’re not exclusive. If you’re interested in him-”

“What?” Merrill’s heart sunk, and seemed to bob in her stomach like an apple, making her sick and queasy at how Isabela had managed to be so far from the mark. “No. No, I can’t. He’s not Dalish. His markings aren’t vallaslin. With my clan-... If I was ever-... I won’t always be an exile. Once I can fix the mirror, my clan will understand. Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for them.

“I can’t be with someone who isn’t Dalish. It doesn’t matter how-” Amazing? Beautiful? “How clever and strong they are. I just can’t.”

Isabela kept a supportive hand on her shoulder, and after a thoughtful moment pulled her into a shoulder hug Merrill cherished. “Sometimes I wish I had your life,” Merrill confessed, the words tumbling out one after the other. “You’re so exciting. You have adventures, and duels, and passionate love affairs… my life is just this stale, dry biscuit.” 

“No, you don’t want my life,” Isabela said.

“Why not?” Merrill asked.

“Because you have a good heart, and you deserve better.” Isabela explained, “Come on, let’s finish up here, and then I’ll take you out on an adventure. We can go ship-wreck hunting along the coast.” 

Merrill nodded her assent, and the cleaning resumed. Fenris re-emerged an hour later with a half-empty bottle of something that smelled like it had aged past wine and into vinegar. He drank it like water, hovering in the inbetween of every in and egress.

Merrill almost felt more for him than she did for Isabela. She knew that Fenris had been a slave and that he had suffered terribly at the hands of his former master. She knew that pain and suffering had fermented inside him over the years, and the bad blood had to be let somehow, but there were better ways. Gentler ways that ones Fenris subjected on himself and on everyone around him. 

Isabela didn’t deserve his anger. Merrill didn’t deserve his anger. Fenris didn’t deserve his anger, either, but he lived with it. He drank wine with it. He fed it death, and decay, and distrust, and Merrill couldn’t see what Isabela saw in him. 

When all the bodies and their bones were in a neat pile in the courtyard, Merrill turned them to ash with a fire incantation. Fenris tossed his bottle onto the flames, and the fire devoured the liquor greedily, roaring up to lick at the eaves lining the courtyard. The glass shattered, and it was just one more thing they’d have to clean up. Merrill bristled. 

“Will you leave now?” Fenris demanded. 

“We’ve still got a long way to go until this place is actually clean, sweetness,” Isabela said. “Why don’t you grab a duster-” 

“I do not want it clean!” Fenris snapped at her, “I am tired of clean! I am not a slave! I will do the work of one no longer. Danarius does not own me and neither do you!”

Isabela threw up her hands and left the courtyard. Fenris watched her go, a shrill sort of sound tangled up in his throat. His mouth opened and closed like a door with a rusty hinge until he coughed, and turned his scowl on Merrill. “What? Avert your eyes, witch.” 

“That wasn't very nice,” Merrill said.

“Have I given you some other impression of my character?” Fenris asked. “Have we had some exchange that leads you to believe otherwise of me?” 

“No,” Merrill admitted. “But I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about Isabela. You always tell me I’m dwelling on useless history, trying to reclaim our people’s heritage, but what are you doing here? 

"I'm sorry for what happened to you. The past is important, to you and to all of us. I know it's horrible, but we must know it to move forward. Fenris, you’re not moving forward.”

“Do not tell me to move forward! Danarius is not history!” Fenris snapped. “He is a threat. He is not dead, he is-”

“Not here.” Merrill interrupted him. “We're not cleaning for him.”

Merrill looked about the courtyard. It was a pretty little place, with pretty little things. The wind carried away ash from the pyre, like snow falling up in the cool winter air and catching in the branches of a few dead trees. They were enclosed with stone benches, and accented by a few marble pots holding withered plants. 

A frozen fountain stood at the courtyard’s center, a collared slave holding a bowl that poured endless water in any other season. It was no wonder Fenris wasn't happy here.

A snap of telekinetic magic broke its head off. Fenris leapt backwards with what Merrill assumed was another curse, “Kaffas! What are you doing?”

“What you should,” Merrill said. It was a slave fountain. Fenris must have hated it. Fenris had probably hated it. He'd hopefully hated it. “You’re right. This isn’t your house, and it never will be until you do something about it.” Merrill set aside the broom and rolled up her sleeves. “So let’s do something about it! What else should we clean up?”

Fenris, it turned out, wanted to clean a lot of things. Merrill followed him through the estate, ripping down paintings and burning up rugs. It was almost fun. Merrill didn’t have any other word for it. They tipped a Tevinter statue over the third story bannister, laughing, and it shattered into a dozen pieces in the foyer. A few of the cobblestones broke on impact, and somewhere down below Isabela screamed.

“Creators! Are you okay!?” Merrill called down. 

“What in the Void are you two doing?” Isabela yelled.

“Cleaning!” Fenris yelled back. He leaned on the railing, looking at the spoils of their endeavour with an uncharacteristically soft expression until he noticed Merrill staring at him. “What?”

“It’s alright, you know,” Merrill grinned. “Even you can be happy once in a while. It won’t kill you.”

“It might,” Fenris said.

"At worst, your face might crack if you smile,” Merrill teased. “So just be careful.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” Fenris said, lips twitching like he was holding one back. “... Merrill?” 

“Yes?”

“Thank you for this,” Fenris said, “Earlier, I took out my anger on you. On both of you. Undeservedly so. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” Merrill reached over to pat his hand, but Fenris flinched, so she patted the railing instead. “... You’ll be good to Isabela, won’t you?” 

“I don’t think she needs me to be anything to her,” Fenris said slowly, “But I will endeavor to do as you say."

"Do you feel better now?" Merrill hoped.

"I do," Fenris seemed surprised to say. "Perhaps I should clean more often. You would be welcome to join us."

"Us?" 

"Me," Fenris corrected himself. "For cleaning."

"I'd like that." Merrill smiled. 

The cleaning - the cleaning that fixed things and didn't break them - went faster with three people working together. They broke a broom and ran out of soap, but they finished Fenris' bedroom, the wash, and the kitchen, and gave up on the rest. 

It was enough that Merrill's feet stopped sticking to the floor, and Isabela's nose didn't wrinkle its way through the estate. It wasn't her mirror, but it felt good to fix something. To leave it a little better than how she found it. Fenris seemed happy. Isabela seemed happy. Fenris and Isabela seemed happy together. 

The window in the foyer was still broken when they gathered to say their goodbyes. Merrill levitated the shattered glass and splintered boards, and a surge of nature magic grew the grapevines between the pieces. 

Broken light caught through the window, and fractured out across the foyer, casting jagged shadows in the dented cobblestones. It almost looked a little better for having broken.

"That looks lovely, Kitten," Isabela said.

"The tax collector might notice," Fenris said.

"He won't be coming around again," Isabela promised. "Funny story-"

"I'll pass but thank you again for the help," Fenris said. 

Merrill glanced back at the mansion, after they left. It was still nestled away in its dark corner of Hightown, boarded and bolted up. Nature reclaimed it slowly, through the cracks and all the broken pieces. 

It was a lovely little thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merrill upon reflection:  
>  _“We cleaned out the bodies a few months ago… I planted a few flowers outside last week.“_
> 
> _“Fenris just doesn't know how to explain how he feels. And mostly he just feels cross. Like Hawke. I feel sorry for him. He was a slave. When we went to clean his house, he got so angry. He said his old master liked everything clean. It was so sad._
> 
> _"But he can't just live with a bunch of dead bodies, so we cleaned up the bodies and broke things. Statues, paintings… it was fun."_


	3. Victimless Details

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the demon is in the details.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes between Chapter [87](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/49128629) and [96](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/50814586) Accursed Ones, but reading it is not required to understand this story.

9:32 Dragon Cassus Someday Sometime  
The Blooming Rose

Sweat had ruined the bed in the way that only sex and sick could. The night had felt like a coin toss between one or the other, and right now Isabela was leaning towards sick. Vague human and elven outlines were soaked into the sheets, like the chalked bodies from some crime of passion. 

"You ready for round six, sweet meat?" The prostitute beside her purred.

Isabela ran her fingers through the sheen glistening on the prostitute's milky skin, and the blush slowly melting from it. The pretty shade of pink was purely transactional - and that was the way Isabela liked it. She paid good coin for it. She knew exactly where that blush came from, and it wasn’t an idling touch or a lingering look or any of the other silly things that stirred it in Merrill.

Isabela did not want to think about Merrill. The prostitute was basically the exact opposite. She might have been an ex-Dalish, but there the similarities ended. She was a prostitute, for one, and her ink was wrong, for another. Merrill’s vallaslin was for Falon’Din, and the prostitute’s was for Ghilan'nain, the mother of halla, which Merrill's clan had lost. 

Isabela hated that she knew that. 

The prostitute's lips were painted pink, not purple, and her pretty pitch hair had been done up in pigtails, not braids. Isabela had pulled them out, tangled her fists in the other woman’s hair, and ridden her until she could taste herself on the prostitute’s tongue. Around that same time, she had to admit this wasn’t helping. 

“I’m spent,” Isabela sighed. She kneaded absently at the pliant skin of the woman beside her, dragging her fingers through the damp drenching her thighs, ocassionally slipping them into her sex and wishing her problem had been fixed with it.

It had to be blood magic or something. Tangling up in Isabela’s veins and growing a heart where a lump of coal should have been. Nothing else made sense. Faith was a good lay. At least, Isabela was pretty sure her name was Faith. She was also pretty sure it didn’t matter if it wasn’t, because it wasn’t a real name. Not for a Dalish. 

Isabela hated that she knew that too.

“Really?” Probably-Faith asked, “Because you seem more tense than when you came in. Makes a girl wonder if she’s good at her job.”

“You were lovely,” Isabela promised. “It’s not you.”

“Tell Momma Faith,” Faith slipped an arm around Isabela and rolled her onto her shoulder. Her breasts were marvelous, pert and petite and inked to match her face, but they were the wrong breasts. The wrong ink. The wrong face. 

Isabela sighed again. “There’s a girl.”

“There always is,” Faith said.

“This girl is different.”

“They always are.”.

“I know how it sounds. I just don’t have what she wants. It’s not inside me.”

“Do you want it inside you?” Faith asked playfully. . 

“It’s nothing to do with rutting, sadly. I don’t think the poor girl’s ever been with anyone, honestly, and I can’t be someone’s first. Especially not someone who wants me to be their last.” Isabela rolled herself out of bed and started gathering up her clothes. “This is so much easier.”

“This is so much more expensive,” Faith countered. 

“Trying to lose my business, sweet thing?” 

“It’s Madam’s business,” Faith said bitterly. “Let her lose it.”

“Don’t you get a cut?” Isabela stopped in the middle of buckling her boots, “How much are you getting for tonight?” 

“Aside from the pleasure of your company?” Faith asked. She looked pretty as a painting and just as enigmatic as one, propped up against her pillows, but even paintings were paid for. 

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re not getting paid,” Isabela frowned.

“Then I won’t tell you.”

“Horseshit! I paid for premium. Standard rate is fifteen percent at the Pearl. You should have gotten at least thirty silvers.”

“This isn’t the Pearl, sweet sauce,” Faith smiled the sort of smile someone smiled when they didn’t want to smile, “I shouldn’t have said anything. Tell me more about your girl.”

“Forget my girl,” Isabela said. Maker knew she was trying. “What’s keeping you here if not the coin?”

“Why do you want to know?” Faith asked. 

“I need a good distraction,” Isabela explained to Faith as much as to herself. “I tried sex. I’m all out of ideas. Come on, tell me what’s going on here. How do we turn this whore house into a whore home?” 

“Get me out of it,” Faith joked mirthlessly. “I don’t mind work, when it’s women, but the Madam says a client’s a client. I’m only here for the roof. There aren’t too many of those in the alienage, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“The hahren won’t take you in?” Isabela asked. 

She hated that she knew what a hahren was.

“He threw me out,” Faith explained. “I used to run with Athenril’s gang. Shills. Sweeps. A bedlam or two. 

“She took care of elves... until the guard got her and the Coterie swept up the survivors. I never meant to stay here, but we have to earn our bounties worth for the guild before we’re allowed to keep any of the coin. For the risk. Harlan keeps a cut for food and lodgings and after a while I just stopped counting.”

“Harlan?” Isabela scoffed. “That Coterie dandy? Don’t let him walk all over you. Being a courtesan doesn’t make you a slave. If I was in his place I’d make damn sure you got your cut.” 

“Are you a Madam somewhere?” Faith asked excitedly, “Do you have your own house?”

The question was more eager than any of the tilting gasps or whimpering mewls that had spilled from her lips in the hours they’d spent together, and Isabela regretted saying anything. It wasn’t her problem. What did Isabela care for anyone but Isabela? What did it matter to her what happened to elves? What did she get out of this? She wasn’t a Madam. 

She was a Captain. 

It was what the girls called her. It started with Faith, and spiraled out of control. Elf after elf who had nowhere else to turn but to the sheets or to the streets. After a while, it wasn’t just elves. There were a few humans, and even a dwarf who’d been a noble hunter in Orzammar and couldn’t adjust to life topside. 

Isabela was a Madam without a House, a Captain without a Ship, but she made it work. At first. The girls went to the clients rather than having the clients come to the girls, and there was always someone in Hightown who appreciated the discretion. If they left with a few more things than they came with, then no one was really the wiser.  
.  
Bedlams. Burglaries. Heists. Isabela wasn’t doing them any favors. It was just business. Keeping the girls on their backs turned out to be the best way to keep Castillion off hers. The girls made it easy to hunt for her relic across all of Kirkwall. If the girls couldn’t find it - which they never could - Isabela still got a fifty-fifty cut of whatever they did find after she fenced it.

Then Faith got caught.

The Big Girl cornered her in the Hanged Man for it.

“I had trouble with one of your women, Isabela.” Aveline said, inviting herself to sit beside her at the bar. “She stole from a… distracted client. You’re lucky she wasn’t jailed.”

“My women?” Isabela raised an eyebrow from behind her tankard. “I am but a shepherd. And what free enterprise are you oppressing now?”

“Theft is not enterprise.”

“Opportunities insufficiently guarded,” Isanela waved her off, “Victimless crimes.”

“Except for all the victims,” Aveline frowned.

“Details. Victimless details.”

“I let her off with a warning because she knew you. I won’t next time. I know you need to find your relic but robbing half of Hightown with a hoard of whores is not the way to go about it. Tell me what the relic is and I’ll put the guard on it.”

“Courtesans,” Isabela said.

“Excuse me?”

“They’re courtesans. Not whores.”

“What’s the difference?”

Isabela shrugged. “They have nicer shoes.”

Aveline leaned back on the stool and took a long look at her legs. “I think your shoes are fine.”

“Look at you being funny! That might even get you a man someday.”

“Are you going to let me help you or not?”

“Not,” Isabela said. 

It had been a silly mistake. Faith had overstayed her welcome with a client for lack of any others. Which wasn’t a problem if you weren’t stealing from them or you had somewhere else to go, but Faith didn’t. The girls needed somewhere to sleep when they weren’t sleeping with someone else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere spacious.

Somewhere Isabela usually stayed anyway when she wasn’t staying at the Hanged Man. 

“Go ahead, say it,” Isabela said, tracing along the edge of Fenris’ markings. 

It had fast become her favorite game to play with him. The lyrium beneath his skin burned to the touch - and so she never touched. But she loved to tease, and Fenris loved to be teased, and so she traced. Isabela navigated the intricate linework on his trembling stomach, watching his cock twitch and wondering if she could get him off without ever reaching it. She’d managed it the first time they played, and had been obsessed with repeating the incident ever since.

“What is it you wish me to say?” Fenris asked, curling a strand of her hair around his slender fingers.

“I don’t know,” Isabela admitted, her touch moving in lazy circles on her way down to his thighs, “Maybe, ‘No, you pirate whore, you can’t keep a bunch of strangers in my house?’”

“It is no house of mine,” Fenris said. “I can share.”

“And the whoring?” Isabela asked.

“Slavery or no, flesh is always for sale,” Fenris shrugged with his eyebrows, since he couldn’t do it with his body. “At least it is their choice, though it is a choice that puts them at risk. Danarius could return at any moment. They are aware of this?”

“They’re used to men like him,” Isabela said. “Danarius. Castillon. Harlan. They’re just names to the girls. It’s hard to care about the knife someone might put in your back when you’re more worried about the knife hunger puts in your gut.”

“It seems no knives would be preferable.”

“I’m all ears if you have a better suggestion,” Isabela said, tugging on one of Fenris’ pointed ones. Knives would always be a part of their lives. It was ingrained in the slurs human slogged like shit at their passing. 

She hated that she cared. 

“None,” Fenris admitted. They played out the rest of their game, and Isabela won eventually. She lay on her side, untouched and content while Fenris caught his breath. “You actually enjoy this?” Fenris asked after several deep breaths and one very satisfying shiver.

“Sweet thing, this is the most fun I’ve had all week,” Isabela promised. It wasn’t like they couldn’t have normal sex… whatever that meant, but there was something special about their game. It made her feel good about herself for being good to him.

… in bed, of course. 

“The witch wants you,” Fenris said suddenly.

“And you had to go and ruin it,” Isabela sighed, rolling away from him to throw an arm over her eyes.

“Do you not want her in turn?” Fenris asked. “You shouldn’t cage yourself on my account. The last thing I want from this is chains.”

“Believe me, sweet thing, there are no chains between you and I unless they come with whipped cream and wet frocks. Kitten doesn’t understand that. She doesn’t understand this. The poor girl is probably a virgin.”

“So she must be virginal?” Fenris argued. “I told you before I have no memory of my time before my markings. You may well be the first person I have ever been with.”

“I’m not hearing this,” Isabela covered her ears.

“Hear it,” Fenris said. “I will not pretend to know what you see in the witch, but I will also not pretend not to see it. I would have you happy. You deserve it.” 

“Sweet thing, you have no idea what I deserve,” Isabela sighed.

She’d never tell him. She couldn’t. He’d never look at her the same way again. Isabela wasn’t even sure why that mattered, but it did. It was better that Fenris thought the first time she’d been asked to transport a ship full of slaves was the only time. Better that he thought she was the kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to set them free. Better that he never know how many bodies she’d left beneath the waves.

Things were better on the surface, so that was where Isabela left them. The girls spent the occasional night at Fenris' estate, and Isabela spent hers wherever she pleased. A month passed, and then another, and Isabela carried on she always had. She didn't need Merrill. She had her girls, she had her friends, and she had her lies. She was almost starting to believe them until she spent the night at Hawke’s estate. 

It was just a game of cards, until Kitten used blood magic, and it all fell to shit. It wasn’t Kitten’s fault. Not really. There were always blood mages in Kirkwall, and they came in all kinds of flavors. 

The sour ones were the most common, the ones that went bad and tried to take the whole city down with them. Others were salty, decrying the Gallows while they frothed like the sea. Still more were bitter, believing in blood magic because they’d given up on believing in people. And some, like Idunna the Exotic Wonder of the East, were savory.

She was a courtesan at the Blooming Rose, because apostates, as much as elves, only had so many options in Kirkwall. Everyone had loved her. Everyone had to. She left her victims so deliciously full they didn’t even know they were victims. She’d put some sort of compulsion on Varric, and Kitten had broken it. Everyone overreacted. 

They thought Merrill was casting a new compulsion, and not breaking an old one, but Merrill would never, because Merrill was sweet. So sweet she thought the very best of everyone and everything - even blood magic. So sweet she was almost too sweet. It made your teeth hurt, turned your stomach, and left you curled up and queasy because you’d had too much but somehow not enough. 

Everyone left. Isabela should have left too, but it would have meant leaving Merrill, and the little Dalish had been left often enough. They sat on the floor of Hawke’s estate, in a pile of scattered cards and coins, Merrill pressed so close she’d almost crawled into her lap. She smelled of leaves and lyrium and other lovely things. 

“I suppose I ruined the game, didn’t I?” Merrill asked, picking at her cards with her thumb with a sad sort of smile Isabela imagined kissing truth into, but Merrill wouldn’t want a kiss. Merrill would want more, and Isabela couldn’t give her more, and so she stroked her hair instead, “... I just wanted to help. I know I used blood magic, but I know what I’m doing.” 

“I know, Kitten. It’s their loss,” Isabela said. “We were up to ten silvers. Play you for it?” 

They played. Isabela won. 

“Why do you always win at cards?” Merrill asked.

“Because I cheat, Kitten,” Isabela explained, retrieving a carved comb Merrill had tossed into the betting pile, “This trinket, it’s elven isn’t it? From your clan?”

“It is,” Merrill agreed. “Sometimes… I think I made a mistake leaving them. I thought it would be different in the city, but it’s not. No one here believes in me either. Not the way you do. I can’t believe you’re still sitting here, playing cards with me, even knowing what I am. Sometimes I think… you’re too good. I know that you mean well, I just wish…”

“We’re friends, Kitten,” Isabela promised. “Where else would I be?”

“Somewhere safe. Anyway from the evil blood mage. Master Illen carved that for me - before he knew…”

“Don’t bet anything you’re not prepared to lose. Here, have it back.”

“You could keep it,” Merrill blurted. “If you wanted.”

“It’s yours, Kitten,” Isabela pushed it at her. “I was just in this for the coin.”

“I still- I mean-” Merrill recoiled, bobbing and weaving around every thrust of the comb, “It would be nice. To give it to you. If you wanted it.”

“Kitten, no-”

“Iwantyoutokeepit,” Merrill caught Isabela’s jabbing hand and trapped it against her breasts, “I just- I want you to have something of me. Of mine. If you want. I mean- I want you to want-... is it warm in here? Elgar’nan, I’ll stop talking now.”

“Alright, Kitten, I’ll keep it,” Isabela slid the comb into her hair, hoping that would be the end of it. 

It wasn’t.

“You look nice,” Merrill persisted. “I mean - It looks nice. I mean, not that you don’t look nice. You do! You’re beautiful. And clever. And you’re so good at cards. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“It’s fine, Kitten,” Isabela lied. She lied a lot, around Merrill, but she didn’t have any other choice. Isabela knew what she wanted. It wasn’t the scars beneath her sleeve Isabela feared, it was the heart she wore atop it. “It’s been a long night.”

“I just-... I wanted to tell you-... I’ve been wanting to tell you-... If I hadn't met you, I can’t imagine where I'd be. I’m not like you and I wish that I were. I want you to know that I-”

“Kitten. No,” Isabela cut her off. “Don’t go there. I’m just a thief.” 

“You’re not! You’re so much more! If you were Dalish - I’m sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable. I know-... I know you have Fenris and I know I don’t deserve you and I know it’s foolish of me to even dream that you might-”

Shit and piss, she was never going to stop. Isabela silenced her with a hand over her mouth, and it couldn’t have been more obvious that it was not how Merrill wanted to be silenced. Her emerald eyes trembled with unshed tears, and searched Isabela’s face for something that just wasn’t there.

“Kitten… listen. You don’t want me. You’re the First of the Sabrae Clan, and someday you’re going to fix your mirror with your magic, and show them they were wrong about you. And you can’t go back there with me. Sweet thing, I’m not Dalish. I’m barely human. I’m just a lying, thieving snake, and you’re too good for me.”

Isabela let her hand fall away slowly, hating herself for the few tears she took with it. Merrill swallowed. “But I love you.”

Aw fuck.

“I shouldn’t have said that, should I?” Merrill seemed to realize. She scrambled to her feet, and paced in a panicked circle. “I’m sorry. I always say the stupidest things. I should go. It would be good for me to go, wouldn’t it?”

Isabela stood up to catch her - and because she couldn’t do anything else - kissed her. She was bound for the Void. She knew it. She wasn’t made for Merrill. She wasn’t made for anyone. No one was ever going to get what they needed from her. Not Castillon. Not Fenris. Certainly not Merrill. 

The kiss didn’t mean what Merrill wanted it to mean because Merrill wanted it to mean too much. She went so limp and light in her arms Isabela almost thought she fainted. Her lips barely moved, save for the soft whimper that escaped them. Hesitant hands climbed up Isabela’s back, and finally found their strength when they reached her shoulders. Merrill clung to her like a drowning woman to flotsam, gasping when they broke apart like the sea had just spat her out onto the shore.

“Are we-...” Merrill choked, “What happens now? What did this mean?”

“Now…” Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Merrill stared up at her, trembling, and Isabela knew anything less than everything would break her, and Merrill had enough broken things. “Now we stay friends,” Merrill sucked in a sharp breath, and Isabela caressed her cheek to keep her from crumbling. “More than friends, if you want… but you never say that to me again.”


	4. A Free Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fenris is a free man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events of this chapter take place during [Chapter 111- Lyrium and Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/66847096) of Accursed Ones, though reading it is not required to understand this story. Thank you for reading!
> 
> TW: Torture

9:33 Dragon Parvulis  
Kirkwall Lowtown: The Hanged Man 

It wasn't just the markings. 

He walked a pace behind. He stood until he was told to sit. He stayed silent until invited to speak. He followed. He obeyed. He might not have been in chains, but he wasn't free. He'd just traded one master for another.

It had never been clearer to him than the night they played Diamondback. Fenris had a good hand, with good cards, but they weren't his cards. Not really. Fenris didn't own cards the same way Fenris didn't own anything. Hawke owned cards, and Fenris was just playing with them. Like he was playing at freedom, pretending Danarius wasn't still out there, waiting for him to slip up and show his hand.

Fenris laid his cards facedown on the table, trying to calm himself down. Danarius wasn't here. No one was here but his friends. Friends who failed to notice he stopped playing... save for Hawke, who kicked him beneath the table. Fenris picked his cards back up, but the suits all swam together, serpents slithering into swords, and he folded on the next round. 

"Break for drinks," Hawke said suddenly, stuffing his hand into his pocket. The archer found a new place for himself by the window, while his companions helped themselves to the buffet Varric had set out. Fenris joined him, a tankard in his hands he didn't remember filling that he extended to Hawke without thinking.

Hawke thought for him. He pushed the tankard gently but firmly into Fenris' chest. "I can get my own damn drink."

Foam faded to lager, and Fenris's warped reflection stared up at him in horror as the realization of what he'd done set in. Hawke wasn't Danarius, but he didn't need to be. Fenris served him anyway. Without thought. Without hesitation. Because that was what slaves did. Because that was what Danarius made him.

Fenris felt sick. Years. It had been years, and he still-

Hawke squeezed his shoulder, "Hey, I can get my own damn drink. Say it."

"... you can get your own damn drink.”

"I can get my own damn drink!" 

"You can get your own damn drink!" Fenris shouted.

A shocked silence fell on the room at his outburst, broken by Hawke’s bark of laughter. “Damn right, I can,” Hawke agreed. Their peers chuckled nervously, and the night recovered, though Fenris couldn't say he did. Hawke helped, but the lager helped more. And if it didn't help enough come morning, Fenris supposed, he could always get its help again. 

Fenris was not awake. He had made that decision some hours prior and it seemed like a decision that should last for some hours more, though whoever was at his door seemed to disagree. It didn't stand to reason that anyone should be at his door, considering Aveline had taken great pains to ensure the patrols never passed his house. Which meant it was neither a patrol, nor anyone who stood to reason.

Fenris clawed his way out of bed and onto the floor, pursued by an avalanche of empty bottles. Gravity and alcohol conspired against him, but the knocking proved the worthier adversary. It kept pace with his pulse, and resultant morning's migraine. 

Fenris swore his way into the hall, down the stairs, and to the foyer, where the witch might have let herself in rather than drag him down for the task. "You have a key," Fenris reminded her when he finally opened the door. 

"I know," The witch-... Merrill said, stepping inside. "It just seems rude to come in uninvited."

She brought the forest with her, as always. Dressed in furs and leathers, elfroot in her scent, evergreen in her eyes, an oaken walking stick he knew to be a staff clutched tight in calloused hands. There was a flush to her pale skin despite its presence that spoke of the long trek from Lowtown to Hightown, and made it clear she'd only just arrived and for some reason come to him. 

"If you were not invited you would not have a key."

"I suppose that's true." 

"No supposition is needed," Fenris went to fetch himself a glass of water from the kitchens; Merrill followed, giving no indication as to the reason for her visit. Nothing beyond her smile, dimpled into her cheeks, that he neither needed nor wanted. "Still not an abomination, I see." 

"Well, let's take a look. Not insane. Not deformed. Not attacking everyone," Merrill said lightly, inspecting one limb after the other. Scarred as they were, his barbs found no purchase. "No, I think I'm still good."

"Such a relief," Fenris cleared his throat, "What are you here for?"

"To see you," Merrill said.

“And so I am seen. What more would you have of me?”

“Are you?” 

“What?”

“Seen. You’re always up here all by yourself - except when we’re out with Hawke or Varric.”

“So I am alone except when I am not? What other sagacious insights did you come to share?”

“You’re impossible to talk to sometimes!” Merrill’s smile finally flipped into a frown. “I came because I wanted to invite you to the alienage. You never come."

“I don’t live in the alienage."

“You don’t live in the Hanged Man, either, but you visit. I think it would be good for you, to have people, to know you're not alone, to come see the plight of our people -”

“I don’t need to visit the alienage to know what our people suffer,” Fenris finished his drink, and tossed the empty cup. It joined an ever-growing pile of shattered glass and porcelain in the far corner of his kitchen. He hadn’t given much thought to what he’d do when the cupboards emptied, but he’d be damned if he cleaned one more piece of Tevinter crock or cutlery. “I know it better than you.”

“I’ve lived there for years, and I've seen first hand-”

“I do not care what you have seen!" Fenris snapped. He didn't need her pity. "You know nothing of being a slave!” 

“And you know nothing about being free,” Merrill shot back. It felt like he’d been flayed - his every nerve raw and exposed. Fenris shook with something between rage and grief, but the truth of it drained him of all his strength, and he sank to the floor. Merrill crouched down beside him. “Hawke told us why you were upset - after you left last night. Because you got him his drink… because it made you feel like… I thought you were just being nice, but I suppose I should have known better. 

“I’m sorry - I’m kidding - I shouldn’t be kidding - anyway - my people have a saying. An oath, actually. ‘We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.’ We have more in common than you think, Fenris. I can help you.” 

“How?” Fenris asked hollowly. “What would you know of it? What do you do when you stop running?”

“You start over,” Merrill said, as if it were that simple. 

“I don’t know how,” Fenris ran a branded-hand through his shock white hair, and stared at the pile of broken glass in the corner of his kitchen. There was nothing left of whoever he’d been before Danarius to start over with. “... You waste your time. My problems are not yours.” 

“Time is just time. You can’t waste it. It doesn’t spoil, or go moldy when you’re not looking. I want to spend some with you.”

“Why?” Fenris demanded. “Did Isabela put you up to this?”

“No.”

“Then why? I have given you no reason.”

“I don’t need one.”

Merrill’s smile returned, crinkling at the edge of her eyes, framed in the vallaslin of some long forgotten god. Markings she had chosen, and her people had chosen, in defiance of those who forced such markings on him. She was… different. A mage, and a blood mage at that, but a good one. Eager to believe in everything and everyone, whether or not they responded in kind. 

Maker knew Fenris never had.

… maybe that was unworthy of him.

“I’ll... consider what you’ve said.” Fenris conceded. 

“You’ll come to the alienage, then?” Merrill asked.

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Perhaps.” Fenris smiled.

Tomorrow never truly came, but Fenris spent more todays with Merrill after their talk. She meant well, but his problems weren't so easily solved. Fenris much preferred Isabela's approach to solving problems: ignore them until they went away. Unfortunately, it worked all too well with his freedom.

He should have known Danarius would come for him. He should have known he'd never let him be. He should have expected he'd send his apprentice to do his dirty work. He should have recognized her trap before she sprung it. He should have done a lot of things, but above all, he should have enjoyed his freedom more while it lasted. 

Hadriana certainly enjoyed taking it away. He'd been on his way home when his master’s apprentice ambushed him. A blood magic compulsion had walked him into a glyph of paralysis, and enchanted chains suppressed his lyrium markings. From there, it had been as simple as throwing a hood over his head and moving him to wherever she liked. A ship back to Tevinter, if Fenris had to guess. A decent sized one, at that, considering he could hang from his wrists without touching the floor. 

It smelled of brine and oak, and creaked restlessly within the ocean’s embrace. A chill carried on the air and swept across skin his captors left bare. Hours passed in darkness, shackles wearing his wrists raw, before he heard the first footsteps echo in the hull, and for one foolishly inane moment, imagined himself a rescue. Then he heard the whip crack. The familiar sting sliced across his back, drawing a sharp hiss and little else. He wouldn't give Hadriana the satisfaction of a scream.

"Comfortable, elf?" Hadriana asked, voice blithe with satisfaction. The sensation of her nails dragging over his chest followed, burning the lyrium beneath his skin, "I hope so. It's a long voyage back to Minrathous, and we wouldn't want to damage our master's favorite slave, now would we?

“That’s what you are, you know, in case you forgot in all your time away. Don’t think Danarius has forgotten that little stint in Seheron. You have a lot to answer for when we get back - assuming he even gives you the chance. Should I let you in on a little secret?”

The whip cracked again, and Fenris braced himself a second too late for the blow that ripped across his shoulders. He was left spitting and gasping against the pain, saliva catching on his hood and sticking to his lips. “I don’t think he will.” Hadriana continued, “I think, he’ll put you back in the sarcophagus, and make you a good little slave again. After all, a slave who doesn’t know anything is a slave who knows his place. What do you think?”

Fenris kept silent, until the whip drew the twisted child of a snarl and a sob from his lips. “I said, what do you think, slave?” Hadriana screamed at him. 

“...Nothing.”

“What was that?” Hadriana came so close he could smell the embrium in her perfume. It would have taken little effort to slam their heads together… to no particular end, save his own defiance of the inevitable. 

“Nothing.”

“That’s right. You don’t think. You just do as you're told. So tell me, slave, how many lashes do you think you can take before the scars mar your markings?”

“I do not know.”

“Wrong answer,” Agony bloomed across his lower back, and Fenris choked on a sob. There was no right answer. The answer was whatever she wanted it to be. It was a familiar game, one she’d played with him countless times before. “How many lashes, slave?”

“As many as you wish,” Fenris guessed.

“Well, well. I guess you can teach an old wolf new tricks,” Hadriana said.

The creak of a door opening, and a new set of footsteps interrupted them, “Mistress Hadriana, your presence is requested on deck. The harbormaster is demanding a second docking fee.”

“A second-...” By her sharp inhale, Hadriana barely managed to compose herself. “Fine. You, hold off until I get back. You know how delicate southern sensibilities can be. We don’t need them investigating the hull.”

Whoever was in the hull with him grunted, and there was a screech of a chair being dragged across the floor, followed by silence, and the occasional drip of blood from his back. Beyond the pain, he felt… nothing. Worse than nothing, he felt at ease with the familiarity of it all. This was his life. His life wasn’t grand adventures with Hawke, and card games with Varric, and passionate nights with Isabela. It was chains. It was always chains.

He didn’t hear the commotion until it was on him. All at once, there were screams, the thunder of boots on wooden planks, the clash of steel on steel. A blast sounded in the near distance, followed by a rush of ocean air, and Hadriana’s desperate plea, “Don’t kill me! You’ll never free him if you kill me!”

“Talk!” A familiar voice barked. 

“Wait!” Cried another, in a thick Dalish accent, “Don’t touch him! There’s a-”

A crash sounded through the hull, followed by a snarled curse. “Damn Tevinter and all their mothers-”

“A glyph of repulsion beneath him. I can neutralize it, let me just-”

There was a sound of something slicing, followed by a bubbling hiss, and then the hood was off his head, and someone unhooked his chains from where they kept him suspended. His vision came back in spots as the torchlit hull formed around him. Crates and barrels lined the room, which appeared to be a cargo hold. From the rafters, other less fortunate souls hung - drained of all blood. Sacrifices to fuel Hadriana’s power. Hawke stood at the shattered entrance, a fresh corpse at his feet and bow trained on where Hadriana cowered in the far corner. 

Isabela knelt in front of him, lockpicking tools clicking at the shackles about his wrists. Merrill stood some distance off, dripping spheres of blood still suspended midair from whatever spell she had cast or yet channelled. 

“Give the Maker my regards,” Hawke loosed the arrow. It punched through Hadriana’s shoulder with a fount of blood and shattered bone. The magister let out a tortured scream, scrambling for the power her own blood provided. Fenris could see the formations of the spell, when all at once it splashed back in her face. 

“Na abelas,” Merrill said.

Hawke notched another arrow.

“Wait!” Hadriana sobbed, glacial eyes rife with tears, “I have information! Elf - stop him, I’ll trade it for my life - you don’t want me dead!” 

“There is only one person I want dead more,” Fenris spat.

“You have a sister!” Hadriana shrieked. “She is alive! Let me go - I’ll tell you where she is!” 

Isabela freed him of his shackles, and Fenris stumbled to his feet. Pushing aside the dried husks of those who’d fueled her voyage, he knelt in front of his old master’s pupil. “Very well.”

“So I have your word?” Hadriana tugged at the arrow in her shoulder, but it had pinned her to the hull of the ship. “If I tell you, you’ll let me go?”

“Yes, you have my word.”

The word of a slave, as it were, meant very little.

He heard the story of how they found him later, when he was of a mind to hear it. One of Isabela's girls had seen the kidnapping and told Isabela, who told Hawke, who told Aveline. The Captain of the Guard had demanded the harbormaster's logs, and there were only so many ships in from Tevinter before he was found. But none of it would have mattered without Merrill.

It was her blood magic that had taken down most of the Tevinter soldiers. Her blood magic that had neutralized Hadriana’s wards. Her blood magic that countered Hadriana’s own. Her blood magic that had been used for good, without sacrifice, for want of nothing but his freedom. 

Learning of his sister changed nothing. Danarius had to know about her, and had to know that Hadriana knew about her, if she even existed at all. It was a trap best left unsprung. Learning of Merrill changed… something. Not how he felt of mages or blood magic, freedom or slavery, but how he felt of her. 

Fenris had been to the Kirkwall alienage on occasion. Where Merrill spoke of community, Fenris saw a collection of cramped slums. High-rising tenements overflowed into hovels of mismatched wood. They stacked atop each other, or burst from the sandstone walls like unruly branches. All of it seemed held together with vines, graffiti, and an air of desperation.

It took searching, and more conversations with the residents than he would have liked (in that it took any at all), but he eventually found her apartment buried in the back of one of the sandstone monoliths. 

"Just a minute!" Merrill called out at his knock. The sound of rummaging followed, and Merrill opened the door in her tabard, and aught else. Her braids were undone, and her hair was disheveled as if from sleep. "Oh! Fenris. Hello. Um-"

"Did I wake you?" 

"Oh, no-" Merrill glanced over her shoulder. "Did you want to come in?"

Fenris stepped inside and Merrill shut the door. He'd never been in her apartment before. It seemed a comfortable, if small, space. Bookshelves lined the walls, unfinished canvases and other projects littered at their base. A fire crackled without wood in the hearth, and a few tables distinguished kitchen from study by their contents.

"Who is it, Kitten?" Isabela called from the backroom.

"Fenris!" Merrill called back; blushing beneath her tattoos. "Isabela is here." 

"So I gathered," Fenris snorted.

"Fun!" A rustling followed, and Isabela emerged from the backroom in little more than her smalls. "Hi there, sweet thing. How is that strong back of yours doing?" 

"... well, thanks to Anders." It left a foul taste in his mouth to admit it, but it was true. "I can return another time."

"You can stay!" Merrill said quickly, "I mean-... he can stay, can't he?"

"Yes, he can," Isabela purred, eyes sweeping over him appreciatively as if he were the one half-naked between them.

"I just came to offer my thanks," Fenris explained, with a nod to Merrill. "For the part you played in my freedom.”

“Oh-um… you’re welcome. I would never let something like that happen to one of my friends.”

“Friends,” Fenris tested the word, “Is that what we are? Forgive me… I have not had many. You saw for yourself the legacy of the magisters; the depths of their depravity. It is the only magic I have ever known... but it is not your magic. It has not been easy for me to see that. If I seem bitter, it is not without cause, but I will never forget what you’ve done for me.”

“That’s it?” Isabela demanded when he turned to leave, draping herself over Merrill’s shoulders. “You’re leaving? What about sex?”

“You appear to have that handled,” Fenris laughed.

“Well, yes, but you know what they say,” Isabela shrugged, “Two’s company, but three’s better.”

Open though their relationship might have been, Fenris had never considered that openness including him. He had certainly never considered it including Merrill, not that she wasn’t a woman worth considering once he saw past her magic. She’d turned so red at the suggestion she looked feverish, though she didn’t dismiss it. 

Isabela lost a wandering hand beneath Merrill’s tabard, drawing a soft gasp from her lips. They were… pleasant enough lips, he supposed. The tattoos beneath them almost matched his own, save that they were done up in blood and not lyrium, and they might have fit well enough together.

“... They do say that,” Fenris allotted.

“What do you say, Kitten?” Isabela nudged her. 

“Well-... if that’s what they say-... Better sounds-... better?” 

“What are you waiting for then?” Isabela grinned, holding out a hand for him over Merrill’s shoulder. It would have been easy to take it, but the moment he’d interrupted clearly hadn’t been meant for him. Given the choice, he wanted something that clearly was. 

“Another night, perhaps? If I am free to consider it?”

“Sweet thing, you’re free to do whatever you want.”


	5. Ir Abelas, Ir Abelas, Ir Abelas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is linked from [Chapter 113 - The Calm Before](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/67207789) of [Accursed Ones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/7904088), though reading it is not required to understand this story.

9:34 Dragon Late Eluviesta  
The Wounded Coast

Fenris didn’t look at her the way he looked at Isabela.

When Fenris looked at Isabela, every glance was stolen. If Isabela noticed his eyes on her, his wistful stare turned furtive and embarrassed. There was an ocean of longing in his eyes he seemed terrified to cross. It was almost as sweet as it was sad, and it was nothing like the way he looked at Merrill.

Before, Fenris hardly looked at her. Now, Fenris hardly stopped. His gaze burned through linen, leather, and wool until Merrill swore she could feel the heat of it on her skin. It was hard to focus on anything else ever since Isabela suggested the three of them _spend time together._ His footsteps felt impossibly close, gauntlets tapping thoughtfully on the hilt of his sword while Fade-green eyes bored into her back. 

It wasn’t her fault she stopped paying attention to where she was going. Merrill collided into a wall of muscle, her staff launching itself from her fingers and into the sand. Hawke steadied her with a confused frown.

“Abelas,” Merrill mumbled.

“On your guard,” Hawke reprimanded her, “We could be ambushed if we’re not careful. The guard doesn’t patrol this section of the coast.”

“Of course, lethallin,” Merrill went hunting for her staff, and found it clutched tight in a lyrium-branded hand. 

Fenris held it out to her, his eyes making a slow sweep of her entire person before they met her own. An imperceptible raise of his eyebrow held a question Merrill didn’t know how to decipher, let alone answer. Creators, she wished he’d stop looking at her like that.

“Ma serannas.”

“Nihil est,” Fenris returned. Had his voice always been that low? Had his eyes always been that shade of green? Had-

Fenris stepped so close Merrill could almost feel the lyrium coursing through him, like the air after a lightning strike. “We should not tarry,” He said, urging her forward with a hand on her shoulder, but his gauntlets were like ice. Merrill flinched, and Fenris pulled his hand back like he’d burned her. 

“Cold,” Merrill blurted hastily. 

“Ah.” 

“... Are you two alright?” Aveline asked.

"What?" Merrill jumped, nearly dropping her staff all over again. 

"You're acting strange."

"I'm not acting anything."

"Right… well, carry on then."

"I'm not carrying anything!" 

Aveline departed down the coast after Hawke. Fenris didn't. He was still staring at her, stripping her down until she felt like she was naked and shivering on the shore. 

"Move!" Hawke's bark finally sent Merrill hurrying after him.

She couldn't remember why they were at the Wounded Coast, but it was probably important. She wasn't sure what the men they ended up fighting had done, but it was probably bad. It was no doubt all part of some grand interconnectedness she should probably be paying attention to, but she couldn't. Not when Fenris kept looking at her like that.

"I'm going to walk the coast for a bit," Merrill decided when they finished doing whatever it was they'd been doing.

"I'll accompany you," Fenris said.

"You don't have to do that," Merrill said quickly.

"I know." 

Hawke and Aveline went wherever Hawke and Aveline went, and left her alone with Fenris. Some insane part of her considered sprinting away from him, or burrowing to the opposite end of the earth with her magic. She did neither, the tide rolling over her ankles as she wandered aimlessly down the shore. Fenris followed, his eyes on her whenever she looked back at him.

After a few minutes, Merrill decided she couldn't take it anymore. She spun around so abruptly Fenris stopped just short of walking into her. He was so close she could see the patterns in his eyes and smell the sweat of battle still clinging to him, tangled up with the brine of the ocean. It made her painfully conscious of her own breathing and the fact that every breath was him. 

Obviously, the solution was to stop breathing. 

"What are you doing?" Merrill demanded.

"Following you?" Fenris said. 

"Why?"

"I enjoy following you." 

Merrill didn't know what to say to that. "Why do you keep staring at me?"

"I enjoy that as well."

Merrill didn't know what to say to that either. She couldn't keep holding her breath, and inhaled a heady mix of sweat, lyrium, and leather. Fenris raised an eyebrow, and the corner of his lips followed. His eyes didn't wander past her own, but that just meant he could see the flush that spread up her neck for his stare. 

"You never did before," Merrill said, "Why are you acting like this now?" 

"Would you rather I not?” Fenris asked. “Command me to stop, and I shall." 

She didn’t. She couldn’t. He sounded so earnest. So unashamed. So content with himself, with her, with the two of them together that she couldn’t help but be content in turn. They walked back to Kirkwall together in a companionable silence, broken only when they parted ways at the alienage.

“Will you come visit me-” Merrill started

“Perhaps I could call on you-” Fenris started at the same time. 

“I’d like that,” Merrill grinned. “Just-... maybe don’t stare so much? Not that I don’t-... It’s just a little intimidating.”

“I think I would struggle to find something else as worthy of my attention, but I will endeavour to do as you say.”

“That’s-... I-... you’re very kind.”

“That’s not an accusation I hear often.” 

“Maybe you should be kind to more people.”

“More people should be worth being kind to,” Fenris countered. “Thank you for the walk.” 

The whole encounter left her feeling strangely giddy. Merrill paced circles about her apartment, trying to find some sort of relief for the emotion. She started a painting, the beginnings of a sweater, and half of lunch, before she decided she had to tell someone. Merrill could count their mutual friends on one hand, and of the handful, the only person she wanted to tell was Isabela.

“He just left?” Isabela pouted over her ale when Merrill finished her retelling that evening at the bar in the Hanged Man. “But you were just getting to the good part!”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Merrill asked.

“Kitten, I’m sleeping with both of you,” Isabela reminded her, nudging her with her thigh, “Why would I mind?”

“It’s more than that,” Merrill whispered into her drink. She’d promised not to speak of love with Isabela, but she hadn’t promised not to speak of love _around_ Isabela. 

“Don’t confuse the issue, Kitten,” Isabela said. “We’re all free to do whatever we want, with whoever we want. If we happen to want to do the same things to the same people, well, that just makes things easier.” 

It didn’t seem any easier to Merrill. She loved Isabela, whether or not Isabela loved her, and she didn’t want anything with Fenris to change what the two of them had together. And the more she thought about it, the more Merrill didn’t want anything to change with Fenris, either. She wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, but she liked Fenris, and Fenris seemed to like her. Not just as someone to sleep with, but as someone to be with.

She decided not to decide, and focused on her mirror instead, but the damned thing didn’t work. Even with the arulin’holm, with her spirit’s knowledge, with all the missing pieces, the eluvian revealed nothing. She was no closer to Tamlen, to Mahariel, to restoring the lost lore of her people. She was, however, a little closer to being soused. At least she could see her reflection in the empty bottles scattered around the base of the eluvian.

A knock at her door interrupted her doldrums, and Merrill stumbled to her feet, shoving the arulin’holm and a handful of grimoires under her bed with an unfocused blast of telekinesis. “Who is it!?” 

Fenris’ deep baritone was barely audible through the woodwork, but it still drew an involuntary shiver, “A friend.”

“Come on in,” Merrill called back, digging the evidence of her magic back out from under her bed. 

She didn’t hear him enter, but he must have, because he was suddenly in her room. He was wearing a leather tunic and trousers, festooned with feathers and covered with a heavy autumn cloak place of his usual armor. He looked warm, and Merrill suddenly felt cold. 

“It won’t work,” Merrill explained, fishing for a bottle that still had something in the bottom of it, “All the years I’ve wasted on it, and it’s still a flaming mirror with no reflection. A worthless hunk of glass. Dread-wolf take it.”

Fenris set a cautious hand atop hers when she tipped the bottle to her lips, “Should you be drinking that much?” 

“That’s something coming from you,” Merrill snapped, suddenly incensed. He’d claimed to be a friend, and that was what she needed right now. Not another rival. “Why have you come? Is it time for another lecture about how reckless I’m being?”

“... No,” Fenris let her have her drink. “... I came because I have been thinking of you. In fact, I have been able to think of little else.”

“Is this about the blood magic?” Merrill guessed. “I know you don’t approve, but I don’t need you, or anyone else to look after me.” 

“So I gathered.”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Merrill slumped against her cot, “My People all think I’m a monster. I thought it would all be worth it, once I fixed the eluvian, but what if I can’t fix it?”

“I have no answers for you,” Fenris settled down on the floor beside her. 

“Of course you don’t,” Merrill laughed bitterly, “You don’t even care about our People. You think I need saving from all of this!” 

“You were not the one who needed to be saved,” Fenris reminded her, reaching for the bottle. Merrill let him take it. His face scrunched up for the taste, but Merrill wasn’t sure what else he’d been expecting. She wasn’t the one with a mansion up in Hightown, and a full wine cellar to go with it. “Perhaps I should bring a bottle of aggregio for my next visit.” 

“What are you doing here?” Merrill sighed.

“I told you,” Fenris said. “Though perhaps I have been unclear in my intentions. I confess, I have not had much cause to practice my flattery. Bela is not the sort of woman to expect flowers.” 

He was staring again, and Merrill could see the Fade in his eyes, where she never could in her mirror. They were nice eyes, and Fenris was doing his best to match them. “Do you really think… all three of us?”

“And why not?” He shrugged.

“With the Dalish, it’s not-... like this,” Merrill hugged her knees to her chest, “We have bonds, one man and one woman, for life.”

“This matters to you?” Fenris asked.

“It used to…” Merrill’s thoughts turned back to Mahariel, and the relationship the Keeper had refused to let them have, and how she’d gone along with it for the sake of her clan. Of how much she’d regretted it after what happened to Mahariel and Tamlen. “... I like you. I know, it’s silly, you’re terribly cross, and contrary, and -”

“I’m flattered,” Fenris said flatly.

“And strong, and brave, and funny,” Merrill continued. “But this is… tricky. Why do you want this? Is it just to make things more exciting?”

“In part,” Fenris admitted. “Though Bela has that covered.”

“I don’t just want to have fun. I want it to mean something.”

“Perhaps it could,” Fenris held a hand over her, and couldn't seem to decide where to put it. Eventually he settled on her knee. “Though not tonight. If there are to be three of us in bed, it should not be because you are seeing double.” 

“You still haven’t told me what you see in me. Mythal knows I can’t see anything in myself in this blighted mirror.”

“Is it so surprising that I think of you? You have given me cause to trust you, something no mage has ever done. Indeed, you are unlike any mage I have ever met. The Dalish may not appreciate what you have done for them, but I appreciate what you have done for me.

“I have nothing to offer you. I am not one of the People, and I know nothing of the magic in your mirror, but… I am here. If you’ll have me.” 

Merrill did want him, but not alone. At least not at first. They told Isabela, a few days later, after a game of Wicked Grace. She was ecstatic. She couldn’t stop grinning, and all but dragged them to her room in the Hanged Man. It was a lovely room, one Merrill had been in many times before. A handful of chests were stacked in the far corner for the day Isabela finally shipped back out to sea. Lewd images were carved into more than a few of them, in addition to the writing desk, the wash basin, and the posts of her bed, waiting for them.

Merrill didn’t know what to do with herself. There were too many people. Too many clothes. Too many limbs. “Who do I -... I don’t -...” 

“Whoever you want, Kitten,” Isabela purred, soft hands kneading at the nape of her neck, “Why don’t you just focus on me for now?”

“Okay,” Merrill took off her scarf. Her belt. Isabela kissed her, ravishing her lips until they were bruised and swollen, the cold metal of her labret eliciting shivers as more and more layers fell away from them. Merrill was distantly aware Fenris was there, the heavy thuds of his armor hitting the ground echoing around Isabela’s eager moans. 

His hands were wrapped around Isabela, and occasionally grazed Merrill’s own. She gasped as much for the involuntary brush of his fingers as the deliberate caress of Isabela’s as the three of them stumbled towards the bed. Merrill hit it first, and Isabela climbed atop her, the mattress sinking with their combined weight when Fenris followed. 

Merrill could almost forget he was there, until Isabela dipped her head to worship at her breasts. She couldn’t help but see him, kneeling behind Isabela, one hand running in eager sweeps down her back, the other moving wetly between the pirate’s legs. His eyes met hers, a smirk on his lips that set her skin aflame. 

“Isabela,” Merrill begged - aching to be touched. Isabela obliged her, driving her fingers into her to the pace of Fenris’ thrusts. Merrill choked on a moan, arching her head back to break eye-contact, but she could still hear him. Still picture him moving in Isabela, still hear his thighs meeting hers, still feel the warmth of the gasps he drew from Isabela against her own skin.

Creators, she yearned for it, but had no idea how to ask for it. She clung to Isabela instead, trembling hands buried in her raven hair, letting herself be driven up the mattress as their sweat soaked the sheets and they sought their end in each other. They met it in waves, one after the other, ripples of pleasure that slowly calmed until they were all left breathless and spent. 

Isabela lay atop her, in a moment Merrill loved. Holding her, feeling the weight of her, the warmth of her. It was a moment that could mean as much as Merrill wanted to believe it did. A moment Merrill felt sad Fenris couldn’t be a part of because of his markings. He sat instead with his back against the wall, touching neither of them. 

“Well I’m happy!” Isabela declared, slapping Merrill’s thigh, “That was something.”

“It was,” Fenris hummed agreeably. He eyed her briefly, and Merrill could feel her face heat up for it. 

“I could get used to this,” Isabela continued, dragging her hands down Merrill’s chest as she sat up and squeezing playfully when she reached her thighs, “Who wants to go again?” 

“I am certainly for it,” Fenris said.

“You know, I have had this delicious little fantasy of you two since we started all of this,” Isabela confessed, running a hand through Fenris’ shock-white hair and mussing it up. “You, lit up in blue, taking her in my arms.”

“... I am for that as well,” Fenris said, watching her. 

Merrill felt his hand on her ankle, a featherlight caress that sent a shiver through her whole body. He was somehow nothing and everything like she expected him to be. Gentle. Quiet. Intense. She might not have felt loved, but she felt close. Like there was something in her that captivated him. Something he wanted for himself. Something she wanted to give him. 

“Okay.”

“Really?” Isabela’s eyes widened. She pulled Merrill into a sitting position and kissed her fiercely, cradling her face in one hand, “This is the best present anyone has ever given me, and it’s not even Satinalia! I love the idea of you trembling in my arms, that lean body sinking into you…” Isabela shifted to sit behind her, attentive hands moving in long sweeps across her body, “You sure you’re okay with this, sweet things?”

“I’m sure,” Merrill said.

“As am I,” Fenris crawled over to her, fade-green eyes burning her to the core while the hand on her ankle made a slow climb up her leg.

“Don’t touch his markings, Kitten,” Isabela warned her, kneading at her hips to spread her legs for him.

“I won’t hurt you,” Merrill promised.

“Nor I you,” Fenris’ hand reached her breast, and cupped her gently, his thumb moving in lazy circles and drawing shaky breaths. Merrill’s hands hovered over him, lost. The lyrium was everywhere. Isabela seemed to sense her hesitation, and reached past her, deft fingers skirting the laylines branded into Fenris’ skin, stroking his chest, caressing his thighs, guiding him into her. 

Merrill felt like she melted. He felt beyond perfect, stretching her, sinking into her, shattering her before he’d even started moving. She dissolved, a mess of whimpering cries at the overwhelming ecstasy of him. Isabela bit her ear, holding her through her tremors, murmuring praises, “You’re so perfect, sweet thing. You look incredible like this. Feels good, doesn’t it?” 

Merrill couldn’t have answered if she tried. She was too focused on holding still, on keeping her legs from locking tight around his hips, her hands from clinging to his shoulders, her lips from pressing against his own. There was too much lyrium. It was inked into every inch of his skin, like a brilliant copper slowly weathered by the elements. And it hurt. She knew it hurt.

It wasn’t agony - there was still a hint of pleasure in him. His eyes fluttered, and he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, hands kneading eagerly at her hips, but it wasn’t enough. She could see the pain in the furrow of his brow and the clench of his jaw. It was unavoidable. The markings on his thighs couldn’t help but touch her, parts of him grazing her or Isabela despite the care they took with him. 

It wasn't the way he deserved to feel. It wasn’t the way Merrill wanted him to feel. It wasn’t the way Merrill would let him feel if she could do anything about it. Merrill pulled on the lyrium, suppressing it with her magic. Almost immediately, Fenris slowed his thrusts, and pulled from her, turning his hands over and back again as he stared at his markings. 

"What did you do?" Fenris whispered. 

“I thought,” Merrill cleared her throat, “You looked so unhappy… does it still hurt?” 

“No,” Fenris sat back on his heels, dumbfounded. 

“So… why are we stopping?” Isabela asked, sitting the two of them up. 

Fenris grabbed Isabela’s hand, and flattened it against his chest. He laughed in disbelief, a wide grin on his face, and then did the same with Merrill. He had a nice chest, and a nicer heart that beat madly beneath it for her magic. Another laugh escaped him, and he dragged Isabela into his arms, locking her into an embrace so tight it almost seemed suffocating. 

“What are you doing?” Isabela chuckled. 

“Holding you,” Fenris explained, running his hands up and down Isabela’s back, “I never thought to dream that I could. You are-... I-.... we were having sex. I apologize, I just-...”

“I’m glad you’re happy, sweetness,” Isabela stroked his arm tentatively, as if she hadn’t quite processed it wouldn’t hurt. When he didn’t flinch, she let her hands wander gingerly over the rest of his body. Merrill sat up to watch them. She’d long since ceased to burn with jealousy when she did, but she’d never looked at the two of them together and felt half as pleased as she did now. It was a nice way to feel. 

“Happy?” Fenris let go of her, “I’m not happy. Happy is insufficient. I am-... This is-... This is better than anything I could have dreamed. Merrill-...” Fenris shifted around Isabela so he could reach her, and lifted her unexpectedly into his lap. A startled sound escaped her, quickly muffled by Fenris’ lips. 

Merrill had never been kissed the way Fenris kissed her. He kissed her like he aimed to swallow her soul. Like he couldn’t breathe without breathing her. One hand clasped the nape of her neck, while the other pressed hers against his body, all but begging her to map it. The three of them tangled together again, and Merrill had never felt so close to someone. 

Fenris’ hand held her thigh, the other wrapped around her back to clutch her shoulder. Her own arms locked around him in a fierce embrace. “Thank you,” Fenris groaned with every thrust. “Thank you. Mage," He said it like a term of endearment. "Merrill. Thank you." 

She felt the heat of his release inside her, and then Isabela was on her, and Merrill had her tongue buried in her, driving her to her end again and again until her jaw was sore. Somewhere in the middle of it, Fenris had her again, and she set a pace to his thrusts, whimpering into Isabela until the three of them had pushed beyond exhaustion and into something else. They lay tangled in each other on sweat-soaked sheets, trying to remember how to breathe and how to move, and how to be more than just sensation. 

“Remind me why we waited so long to do this?” Isabela mused, running a lazy hand up and down Merrill’s leg. 

“Can’t talk,” Merrill mumbled, holding Fenris’ hand and Isabela’s foot. “Jaw hurts.”

“Sorry, not sorry, Kitten,” Isabela chuckled. “So, this little fix of yours, for his markings, is that forever?” 

“No,” Merrill admitted. She hadn’t even been sure if it would work, but it had been a theory she’d been sitting on for months now. She had to channel the suppression, and she wasn’t exactly eager to let go knowing it would mean she’d also have to let go of Fenris’ hand. “I’m channeling it.”

“Do not tire yourself on my account,” Fenris said. “I would be fortunate to rise from this bed, let alone go again.”

“I know, I just-...” Merrill squeezed his hand. Fenris shifted to look at her, a surprisingly tender smile on his lips. He squeezed back. 

“I will be fine,” Fenris promised.

Merrill let go of his hand, and let go of the spell.

Fenris was not fine.

He fell off the bed with an agonized cry, clutching his head and digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. Creators, what had she done? Merrill scrambled off the bed and hovered over him, afraid to touch him. 

Isabela wasn’t. She knelt beside him, a careful hand navigating the lyrium on his back, “Easy there, sweet thing. Are you alright? Do we need to get Anders?”

“Fenris?” Merrill asked, heart-sinking, “What happened? Did I hurt you somehow? I knew I’d make a mess of things.”

“I-...” Fenris snarled, slamming a fist against the floor, “Kaffas, I had it. I had it!” 

“Had what?” 

“My life…” Fenris stared at his hands, flexing them like he expected them to change somehow, “Just -... Flashes. Faces. Words. The lyrium felt so familiar... For just a moment, I could recall all of it.”

“Well… that’s good, isn’t it, sweet thing?” Isabela said. “Don’t you want to get your memories back? Maybe the three of us need to do this more often.” 

“No,” Fenris stumbled to his feet. Merrill had never seen someone get dressed so fast. “This is-... That was-... That was too much. I’ve never remembered anything, and to have it all come back in a rush, only to lose it-...”

“Okay, so, maybe we don’t use magic in bed next time,” Isabela said. “That’s easy enough. Right, Kitten?”

“You don’t understand,” Fenris shook his head, but he wasn’t looking at Isabela. He was looking at Merrill. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I feel like such a fool... This never should have happened in the first place. Forgive me.” 

Fenris left.


	6. Wicked Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is grace for the wicked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second half of this chapter is pulled from 'Those Who Speak' and the third half is pulled from [Chapter 117 - To Save a Sinner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/67757630) of ['Accursed Ones.'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584736/chapters/7904088) Neither is required reading to understand this story.

9:34 Dragon Ferventis  
Kirkwall Hightown: Fenris’s Mansion

“You’ve been spending a lot of time at the Chantry lately, sweet thing,” Isabela noted.

“And what of it?” Fenris asked.

“Nothing,” Isabela shuffled her hand. It was just the two of them, alone in his room, the betting pile an ever growing pile of clothes. “I don’t blame you. Have you seen Sebastian? Those eyes? That hair? The repression? He is just begging for someone to truss him up like a feastday foul and wear him like a puppet.”

“If so, you will have to take that confession for me, I’m afraid,” Fenris chuckled, discarding a card and palming a new one in the process. Isabela didn’t call him out on it. She wasn’t terribly good at that. Not when it mattered. “We are just friends.”

“If it’s not Sebastian, then what? Since when are you a good little Andrastian?”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a little Chantry in you.”

“Said the chancellor to the cleric,” Isabela waggled her eyebrows. 

Fenris laughed, “Have no fear, I am no convert. My faith was never strong. It's difficult for a slave to have faith in someone who abandoned them.”

“But…?” Isabela prodded.

“But nothing,” Fenris shrugged. “I simply come to hear the music from time to time. You could join me, if you wished.”

“What a horrible thing to say!” Isabela shoved him, mindful of his markings, “Why would I want to listen to anything the Chantry has to say? The finger-wagging, the guilt trips, people telling me an unexamined life isn’t worth living?”

“I’ve yet to hear such a sermon,” Fenris said. 

“Maybe you just haven’t been listening,” Isabela stuck her tongue out at him. 

“Do not point your tongue at me, woman, unless you plan to use it,” Fenris threatened.

“Oh I’ll use it alright,” Isabela tackled him. Cards scattered, and clothes followed. 

She lost an hour with him. Whether it was in the sheets or the streets, Fenris was good company. He was such good company Isabela had almost stopped caring about other company. Almost.

Fenris lay on her shoulder, after their hour was up, Isabela toying idly with a lock of shock white hair. Just one shoulder. The other was empty, and it shouldn’t have been. 

Kitten was still about. Isabela still spent nights with her. But the three of them spent no more nights together. Isabela tried not to let it bother her, but it did. If Fenris was visiting the Chantry, it must have bothered him too.

Something possessed her throat, because Isabela never would have asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Fenris rolled off her shoulder and out from under the table. Isabela watched a deep breath play across his shoulders. “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“... Are you sure?”

“Don’t comfort me,” Fenris snapped, snatching up his trousers.

Isabela stayed where she was, watching him dress, while a demon moved her mouth, “Kitten misses you.”

“Why are you telling me this!?” Fenris whirled on her, the green of his eyes a little brighter for the water that played in them. “What do you care? We are together - is this not enough for you?”

“... Is it enough for you, sweet thing?” 

“Of course it is enough,” Fenris laced up his trousers with such force Isabela was surprised they didn’t rip right off him. “Why wouldn’t it be enough? Why would I ever want to remember a life without lyrium? To put names and faces to the echoes she stirred in me!? To be beholden to another mage!?”

“You’re being dramatic,” Isabela flicked a card at him, but it was hard to lighten the mood after she’d tied an anchor to it and dropped it overboard, “Merrill isn’t Danarius. She’s not going to hurt you.”

“She has already hurt me,” Fenris collapsed onto his couch. “... You cannot imagine what it is like to have no idea who you are. To fear who you might be. To know the only chance of knowing yourself is to trust in someone else. To give that power to someone… How can I? What does magic touch that it doesn’t spoil?”

Isabela got off the floor to sit with him. Fenris looked at her from beneath his bangs. He looked vulnerable. Like he’d pulled his own heart from his chest and asked her what to do with it. Isabela didn’t have an answer for him. She didn’t know how to love. At the end of the day, she was willing to bet Fenris didn’t either.

But Merrill did.

“... It hasn’t spoiled her.” 

Isabela found her relic before Fenris found his courage, and everything went to shit. The qunari laid siege to Kirkwall, and Isabela did what Isabela did best: she ran. It wasn’t like she planned it. She’d meant to find the relic, bring it to Castillon, and finally be free of her debt to him so she could move on with her life. Maybe even with Fenris and Merrill in it. 

But life had a funny way of working against her, and Hawke had a funny way of helping it.

Isabela tore through the tunnels of Darktown, satchel with the Tome of Koslun beating bruises against her hip. Kirkwallers were cramped into the undercity hiding from the invasion she’d caused. Isabela shoved through them, wide, terrified eyes and soot stained faces burning themselves into her mind as she left them behind.

“Isabela!” Hawke’s scream echoed through the mineshafts, and she stumbled over the tracks in a panic, armor sparking as she went down and hastily picked herself back up.

She just had to get to the chasm. Once she got to the chasm she could jump, and trust the waves to save her. If the relic could survive a shipwreck, it could survive a swim.

“Isabela!” Hawke bellowed, and Maker save her - because no one else would - but she could hear him gaining. “Stop, damn you!” An arrow sped past her ear, and clattered off the cavern wall. 

Isabela slid around a corner and her feet nearly came out from under her. She scrambled on all fours, trying to block out the thud of Hawke’s boots echoing in the tunnels behind her. Almost there. Almost-

An arrow struck her shoulder. The force of it spun her in a circle, but she kept her balance, and kept going. She just had to keep going. Isabela spotted an ore chute along the ground, and dove into it, dirt and dust cutting her face as she slid down the blackened abyss. It spat her out into another tunnel, and Isabela hit the ground at a roll, snapping the arrow in her shoulder and embedding the arrowhead in deeper.

A scream tore from her lips, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should. She was so tired. She shouldn’t have been tired. It must have been tipped with poison. Damn him. Damn him, and damn her for thinking he was different. For thinking he cared about her. For thinking anyone could.

Isabela kept running. Her arm went numb on the side with the arrow, but she didn’t need it. The relic was in her satchel. She could swim with one arm. She could- 

A second arrow hit her thigh. It pierced clean through her leg, and skidded across the cavern floor along with her when she hit the ground. She scrambled to her feet, dragging her leg, hopping, skipping, sobbing, the chasm - just a little further - just a little -

A third arrow struck, embedding itself in her calf and pinning her to the ground. Isabela collapsed. She was so tired she could feel it in her bones, embedded deeper than Hawke’s arrows. Her vision blurred, trying to focus on the chasm, the smoke rising from the docks, the distant call of the gulls and the promise of the sea. It was so close she could smell the brine. 

A hand on her shoulder rolled her over. Hawke’s face faded in and out of focus, a slash of kaddis across a broken nose, a scowl as dark as Kirkwall’s skies. 

“I thought you were different.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

Isabela woke with the sea beneath her. She could feel the gentle rise and fall of the tides, and thought for a moment she must have died. She blinked up at a ceiling of wood in place of stone, and marked the curved walls as the hull of a ship. Not her ship. Isabela didn’t have a ship. 

The qunari did.

“You awaken,” A stranger’s voice noted. Isabela tried to turn towards it, and agony bloomed in her back. “Be still,” The stranger cautioned, pushing her down so she lay flat against the cot. “You are injured.”

She was a qunari, of course. There wasn’t much more Isabela needed to know about her. She was a qunari, and Isabela was her prisoner, and Hawke had handed her over to them, and no one had stopped him. She’d really stepped in it this time. 

“I have done what I can for your injuries,” The qunari told her, and Isabela hated that it was true. Her shoulder was bandaged. Her leg splinted. It could only mean they didn’t want her dead, which could only mean they wanted her worse. “As you are awake, we should converse.”

“Why?” Isabela laughed, taking in the room. It was a small cabin, with a single porthole that gave her a lovely view of Kirkwall, fading into the distance. There was one door, but the qunari sat in front of it. Given the chance, Isabela would stab her to death with her horns, but she wasn’t exactly in fighting form to do it.

The qunari didn’t answer. She pulled a bowl into Isabela’s line of sight, containing a small orb glowing with lavender flames. “I am Tamassran. Those who speak. Do you know what this is?”

Everyone in Rivain knew what it was. It was one of the many, many reasons Isabela hated the qunari. One of the many, many reasons she understood why Anders hated the templars. It was Tranquility, or close enough.

“No,” Isabela lied.

“You lie, but it matters not,” Tamassran shrugged. “This is qamek - should we fail to reach an understanding, it shall be used to render you vidath-bas.”

“So you’ll turn me into a drooling idiot if I don’t see things your way?” Isabela deduced. 

Tamassran brushed a strand of her hair back from Isabela’s face, with a gentleness that scared her more than Hawke’s roughness ever could. “The qamek frees men and women otherwise beyond redemption. Enlightenment requires submission to wisdom. You will submit.

“Let us begin with your name,” Tamassran suggested.

“My name is Isabela, as you’re well aware,” Isabela frowned. 

“Your real name.” 

_Naishe._ The name, and the woman who’d given it to her, came to her unbidden. It was just a word. Just a combination of letters and sounds. It wasn’t her name. Not anymore. She’d abandoned it when her mother had abandoned her.

Isabela sat up slowly, scooting away from the qunari’s gentle touch, eyes on the qamek, “If you’re going to shove that thing down my throat, you’d best get to it.”

“And we would have every reason to after the crimes you committed against my people. You stole from us, killed many - if we were human, we would parade your head on a spear. But we are not human. And we waste nothing- not even those of little worth. Once again - your name.”

“Why do you care?” Isabela asked, “Qunari don’t even have names.”

“The Qun tells us, ‘to call a thing by its name is to know its reason in this world. To call a thing falsely is to put out one’s own eyes.’ We have names - they are chosen carefully.”

“So what’s yours?” Isabela asked. It wasn’t Tamassran. 

“It indicates the circumstances of my birth, and my position within the tamassran, and would be difficult for you to pronounce. You may call me Rasaan.”

‘I suppose that has some special meaning,” Isabela guessed.

“It does,” Rasaan tilted her head politely, spilling a few white strands about her golden horns, “What meaning does Isabela hold?”

… There were worse punishments than talking about her past, Isabela supposed. At least Rasaan wasn’t making her talk about her future. She tried to make herself comfortable on the cot.

“The first captain I signed one with called me that. ‘Little beauty.’ His idea of a joke.”

“And what became of him?”

“He died.”

“How did he die?”

“Badly,” Isabela said, with a fond memory of Zevran freeing her from her old master, and a pang of regret that she’d never be able to pay it forward for Fenris.

“Do many people die this way around you?”

“What do you think?” Isabela snorted, “I’m a pirate.”

“And that is a good thing?”

“It means freedom.”

“Freedom from what?”

“Something you don’t understand when you force every thrice-damned bastard you meet into your perfect little cult,” Isabela spat.

“Your life offers you freedom from... responsibility?” Rasaan tilted her head to the side curiously, “From guilt?”

“I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes. I don’t feel guilty about any of them,” Isabela said fiercely. She didn’t care if the qunari believed her. She didn’t even believe herself. “What do you want from me?”

“I want your name,” Rasaan said simply. 

“Why is it so important?”

“Why is it so important you not tell me?”

“... My mother gave it to me,” Isabela relented. “I grew up in Rivain. Qunari emissaries were always around - easier than fighting them off and they stayed away from the nobility. I don’t remember when I first heard about the Qun, but it wasn't long before my mother believed. She’d sneak off to the temple before dawn - she swallowed every lie you people fed her. Like she thought slavery isn’t slavery if you call it a code. She wanted to join the qunari, and I didn’t - so she sold me to Antivan merchant. That’s the last I saw of her.” 

“Do you regret your parting?” Rasaan asked.

“I… didn’t like leaving it that way.”

“Would your life have been different had you remained with her? Would it have been better?”

“I don’t regret my life,” Isabela scowled.

“Do you not?” Rasaan ran a gentle hand over the bandages on her leg, and the wounds Hawke had left beneath them. 

“When I escaped my husband -” When Zevran killed him “-I joined the Felicisima Armada.”

“The pirate fleet?”

“Oh yes. It was glorious - adventure around every corner. I was the queen of the eastern seas, and all the men feared me, or wanted me - and that was fine too. There was nothing I couldn’t have. And then I stole your precious book, and you destroyed my ship, and here we are. Why all the questions? Just punish me already.”

“I would know why you stole the Tome of Koslun.”

“It was a job - running a ship is expensive.”

“No more than it had ever been, surely. What changed?”

“The Felicisima Armada doesn’t have a lot of rules, but you pay your dues, no matter what - and some kinds of cargo pay better than others…” Isabela wasn’t sure why she told her. Maybe just so she wouldn’t have to take it to her grave. “We weren’t a slave ship, we were just carrying slaves. They looked at me like I was the one who’d bought them. They came with Devon, the Armada’s ‘procurer’ in the north. He enjoyed his business… and I needed a distraction from the job. 

“It worked for a while. Until the Orlesian navy found us. Orlesians hang slavers. We needed to escape, but Devon had packed the holds so tight-... We were too slow. I tried. I tried so many things, but ships are ships, and the sea is the sea, and the Orlesians were gaining. I wasn’t going to die - not like that. We had to dump the cargo.”

“The slaves could have overwhelmed us, but they didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t all together. They came one, two at a time… I told myself they were better off beneath the sea than wearing collars.”

“You did not make them slaves,” Rasaan said gently. Gently. Gently. Gently. Everything she did was gentle. Like she cared. Like she forgave her. Like she deserved to be forgiven. 

It just made Isabela hate her, but she’d never come close to hating her as much as she hated herself. “I made them dead. I threw them over like crates of apples. Who does that?” Isabela’s laugh turned into a sob, and she choked it back.

She didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve anything but exactly what she’d gotten. Hawke had done the right thing turning her over, and sparing Fenris and Merrill from ever finding out what kind of person she really was. “I swore I’d never traffic slaves again. The next time someone tricked me into it, I freed the lot of them. But the money I owed after all that… it was more than I could earn through raiding. My creditors were getting impatient, so I took the worst job ever to steal your stupid Tome of Koslun.”

“You exchange debt for debt to survive in a land that makes murderers of innocents,” Rasaan ran the back of her fingers over Isabela’s cheek, catching a few traitorous tears that escaped her. She sounded like Anders. Going on about making things right when everything was wrong and always would be. “But it is not too late for redemption.”

“I don’t believe that,” Isabela said. Outside, a hawk perched on the porthole, its head tilted curiously to one side, like it was listening. It reminded her of the man who bore the moniker, but Hawke hadn’t listened. Hadn’t cared. Hadn’t understood that she just needed -... she just wanted -... 

“There is a woman inside you who fights against this injustice, who struggles to make things right,” Rasaan insisted. “She has a name.” 

“You want me to be sorry for what I’ve done?” Apologies only mattered when there was someone left alive to accept them. The qunari couldn’t redeem her. Her apology wasn’t for them. It was for everyone else. “The qunari are butchers! I won’t be sorry for you.”

Rasaan grabbed her by the throat, gentleness abandoned, and wrenched her towards the qamek, “Then let all your names be erased! The Qun welcomes you.” Isabela caught herself on the side of the cot, arms shaking with the effort of holding her up and away from the flames, “You were given every chance,” Rasaan hissed, tangling a fist in her hair and shoving her forward, “You could have had redemption, honor, a place of meaning in this world-”

Isabela heaved herself off the cot, slamming into Rasaan’s chest. The qamek went rolling across the cabin, and they crashed to the floor. Pain seared through her back, through her wounded leg, but she managed to roll onto the qunari’s back. Grabbing her horns, Isabela slammed Rasaan’s face into the floor, again and again, until she heard the crack of her nose and her thrashing arms went lip at her sides. 

“You can’t forgive me,” Isabela wheezed, rolling off her, “No one can. No one ever will.”

The door burst open, and Isabela threw her hands up, balled into fists that wouldn’t save her from the qunari’s spears, “Try it! I’ll make you cry for your -... Anders?”

How?

Why?

It wasn’t possible. This was justice. This was what she deserved. Saving her should have gone against everything Anders stood for, and yet there he was, standing. For her.

“To the rescue,” Anders smiled warmly, like she deserved to be rescued. He crossed the room and opened the porthole for the hawk. Only it wasn’t a hawk. It was Merrill - shapeshifted into one. Merrill had come to rescue her, even after everything she’d done. 

“Kitten?” It couldn’t be Merrill. It couldn’t be. If it was Merrill, that meant Merrill had heard her, and Merrill knew what she’d done, and Merrill would never forgive her-

“I’m so sorry, ma vhenan!” Merrill clung to her, her arms so tight Isabela could barely breathe, “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

“You’re hurting me, Kitten,” Isabela winced, peeling Merrill off her injured leg.

“Sorry,” Merrill shifted off her, caressing her cheek and stroking her hair. Anders knelt at her opposite side, glowing with healing magic as he saw to her injuries. Their hands weren’t so much gentle as they were firm. Sure and supportive.

“What are you two doing here?” Isabela asked.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Merrill said. “We never should have let them take you.”

“Rescue me?” Isabela repeated. “... why?”

“What do you mean why?” Anders demanded, a flash of blue she knew to be Justice shining in his eyes, “Everyone deserves freedom, remember?”

“Some people have freedom taken away for a reason, Sparky,” Isabela looked away from him, and the spirit within him. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention, but I’m a thief. All of this is my own fault. You shouldn’t have come.”

“That’s not true!” Merrill grabbed her face, and forced her to look into her eyes, and the terrifying emotion welling in them, “You’re good, and kind, and brave, and I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“I stole the relic from the qunari!” Isabela shut her out, “I’m the reason they landed in Kirkwall. I’m the reason all of this happened. Don’t you get it? I’m not like you two. You’re heroes! You come flying in to save the day any chance you get, but I don’t. I was never going to give back the relic. You and I have nothing in common. I’m not a hero. I’m just a lying thieving snake.”

“That doesn’t mean you deserve whatever the qunari had planned for you,” Anders said. “I know that. Merrill knows that. Maker, even Fenris knows that. He would have come with us if he could have kept up. He said to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t. I get it, everyone makes mistakes, but you have a chance to fix yours. To make things right again. We just have to get you out of here first.”

“The shore is about a league off,” Merrill wrung her hands together, “Do you think you could swim that far, vhenan? You’re a wonderful swimmer. You’ll be fine, won’t you?”

“I suppose I'll have to be,” Isabela stood, testing the leg Anders had healed. It was like it never happened. “How are we getting out of here?”

Anders burnt a hole in the hull for her to escape through, considering she couldn’t fly out with them. Fenris might have begrudged magic, but it sure would have come in handy for her right now. 

“What if the qunari notice before we get to shore?” Merrill asked.

“Don’t jinx me, Kitten,” Isabela leapt over the edge and into the ocean. Anders and Merrill shapeshifted to follow, two birds circling overhead, keeping pace with her through the choppy waters. It was a hard swim, but she was harder. Isabela pulled herself to the shore, and fell asleep in the sands.

Isabela wasn’t sure how long she slept, but when she woke, she was on Anders’ left shoulder, and Merrill was on his right, with his coat draped over the three of them. He smelled like a horse rode hard and put up wet, but there was something strangely comforting in it. The sweat. The exhaustion. The effort they’d put into saving her. 

She didn’t deserve to feel comfortable.

Isabela shifted, trying to sneak off his shoulder, and accidentally woke him. “Hey,” Anders mumbled, shaking Merrill awake with them, “We should move. We don’t know if the qunari will double back when they figure out you’re missing, and we don’t want to be on the coast when that happens.”

Isabela climbed to her feet, and started for the road, distantly aware that Anders and Merrill followed. They shouldn’t have followed. They shouldn’t have saved her in the first place. They should have left her to fight to the death on the dreadnought, where the qunari could throw her body overboard, and it could join all of her sins beneath the waves.

“Should we take turns carrying each other back to Kirkwall?” Anders joked.

“Kirkwall?” Isabela repeated, “I’m not going back there.”

“What do you mean you’re not going back?” Merrill asked, because she still didn’t get it, even after all the years they spent together. Even after she’d heard Isabela’s confession on the dreadnought. Didn’t understand that she was too good for her. That Isabela didn’t deserve her. That she’d never deserve her. “Of course you’re going back! It’s your home!”

“Kirkwall’s your home, Kitten, not mine, and I destroyed it,” Isabela said, forcing her voice to stay level. No tears. Merrill could cry, and she did, but Isabela couldn’t. “No one wants me there. Not you, not Aveline, not that bastard Hawke.”

Anders winced, but Isabela didn’t blame him. Anders was a good man. Hawke didn’t have anything to do with that. The same way Isabela didn’t have anything to do with Fenris or Merrill. “I know what he did, but-” 

“Then you know he doesn’t want me there,” Isabela cut him off. “He shot me, Anders. I thought he was going to kill me,” She wished he had. “I’d rather take my chances on the run. Don’t give me that look. I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

Anders’ jaw worked like he was trying to chew his emotions into words. Eventually, he gave up, his shoulders sagging as he stared at her unhappily. “... What about Fenris?”

Isabela looked at Merrill. She was crying. Tears ran unashamedly down her face, her bright green eyes so full of love. She could spare some of it for Fenris. They just had to figure it out. “... He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself too.”

“What about me?” Merrill flung her arms around her neck. Merrill clung to her, soft and sweet and shaking, but underneath it all, she was still standing. She’d still be standing long after Isabela was gone. “Ma vhenan - don’t go. Please stay. We can talk to Hawke. We’ll tell him that we saved you, and that you’re sorry for stealing the relic, and that you want to make things right-”

“There’s no making this right, Kitten,” Isabela untangled them, “I’m a wanted woman. Aveline will make sure of it. If I go back there, I’ll just be moving from one cell to another.”

“But we saved you - We saved you so you could stay,” Merrill held onto her hands. “You can stay.”

“I never should have stayed in the first place. I’m a pirate. I should have been acting like one,” Isabela pulled her hands away. “As soon as I get to Ostwick, I’m getting myself a ship, and sailing wherever the sea takes me.”

“But-... but you’ll come back?” Merrill asked, but she had to know the answer, “You’ll write to me, won’t you?”

Isabela smiled, but she didn’t mean it. “Pirates have awful penmanship, Kitten.”

“Please don’t go,” Merrill begged, and even though Isabela had warned her against it long ago, added, “I love you.”

She'd gone years without saying it, but deep down, Isabela knew she’d never gone a day without meaning it. 

Isabela turned, and walked away, “I told you not to.”


End file.
